


The Spy, The Witch, and The Sniper

by overkill_max



Series: Supercorp Historical AUs [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - No Powers, F/F, WWII
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-27
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2018-12-07 12:07:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 5
Words: 23,092
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11623203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overkill_max/pseuds/overkill_max
Summary: Alex and Kara are trying to survive a war unlike anything the world had ever seen before. When Kara falls from the sky, her life changes as a mysterious stranger nurses her back to health. With the Axis powers closing in around them, how will they make it out alive?AU Set during the Great Patriotic War (WWII).





	1. The Girl That Fell To Earth

**_1938 – Moscow_ **

“I want one too.” Alex motioned to the caretaker. “Come on Danvesky, you can play with your toys after the men are done.” Mikhail said condescendingly as he laughed. Although Mikhail was not part of their class, he was friends with enough of their classmates that he always seemed to be hanging around. Alex hated him and usually ignored him but today her little sister was with them and this always meant trouble. Mikhail would always try to show off as a way to court her without having to put any actual effort into it. Which often ended in him mocking Alex and trying to get all the boys to laugh along to his antics.

This overgrown baby made eye contact with Kara and Alex seethed. She took off her school bag, handing it to her sister, who hugged it against her body as she smiled at Alex. “No. I want to compete with them.” She clarified to the disinterested looking caretaker. He looked over at the boys, their carefree attitude, and then at her. Steely determination stared back. He nodded, grabbed a rifle from its resting place next to him and set it down in front of her.

“That’s right Alex, show these silly boys how good you are.” Kara shouted from the bench as she clapped awkwardly, still hugging her sister’s backpack to her chest. Alex rolled her eyes and felt the corner of her mouth twitch up. She could count on her baby sister to always cheer her on. Even when they were doing things their parents disapproved of.

“Danvesky don’t worry, fourth place is also good. You can’t always come in first, can you?” Mikhail tried to make it sound like a joke but Alex knew that he was still bitter about the fact that he didn’t get into First Moscow State Medical University like all his friends. Alex had. And just like the overgrown baby that he is, he took every opportunity to try to beat her. Showing to his friends that he was a big man.

“Everyone makes five shots.” The caretaker explained the rules as he counted out five bullets straight into Alex’s hand. “The winner is determined according to the number of points they score.” Alex set the bullets down and asked softly for him to explain how to fire the rifle. This being the first time she ever held a weapon in her life.

“Take your guns.” He shouted over her shoulder. “Put all the bullets into the magazine.” He whispered to her, pointing to her rifle as he explained. “Fire.” He shouted. The boys fired at the same time. Alex stood her ground. The caretaker put the rifle against her shoulder and pointed to where her eyes should be. “You align this, the rear sight, to the front sight, and your target. Breathe evenly. You want to hold your breath and gently pull the trigger and then you fire.” Alex fired the five rounds without taking her eyes off the target.

“Put your rifles down.” The caretaker shouted. Alex kept the target in sight until he nudged the rifle with his fingers. Causing her to follow along with the rest of the boys. The caretaker walker over to where the targets were and asked them to shout their names out as he stood in front of where they each took their shots. When he got to Alex’s poster, Kara ran up behind her and excitedly shouted for her as she hugged her “Danvesky.”

“Danvesky is the winner. 48 out of 50 points.” Mikhail pouted when he heard this and threw her a harsh glare. “Comrade chief, are you sure you read those numbers right?” The caretaker smiled and walked towards the students. “Go count them yourself if you don’t believe me.” This made Kara jump up and hug her. “Alex, you’re so good. Did you see the boy’s faces? It serves them right for thinking you wouldn’t be better than all of them.” Her baby sister was so proud of her and Alex finally let herself really smile. She could always count on Kara to make her feel like a hero.

 

 

The following Monday Alex was listening to her teacher drone on and on about graduation rituals. They were finally doctors and Alex couldn’t be any prouder of herself. The door next to him opened and an administrator came in, calling out her name. “Danvesky?” Everyone stared at her as she stood up. “Follow me to the rector’s office please. Take your things.” Everyone whispered amongst themselves as she packed up and followed along. Not knowing what she could have done this time to get in trouble, she put her books in her school bag and walked out.

A man in a green uniform was sitting down in the rector’s chair. He had several stars on his collar. The gold of them contrasting against the red line they rested upon. “Danvesky, Alexandra. Born in 1916. Mother – Danvesky, Eliza – Chair of Pathophysiology at the state hospital. Father – Danvesky, Jeremiah – Former Doctor in the Army. Diseased. Body never recovered.”

Alex stood, confused as to why the rector was scribbling everything this man said down like a frightened school girl. “Well? Comrade, is this information correct?” The man asked her as he stood, calmly walking closer to Alex. “It is.” He nodded, going back to the desk to retrieve a piece of paper.

“According to a report submitted by a shooting range instructor, while at the Moscow shooting range this past weekend, you showed excellent results during a shooting competition, earning a near perfect score. You have talent and we decided to send you to a six months marksman training program. Congratulations.” He smiled falsely. Alex was stunned. She didn’t want to go. She had her sister to think about.

“What about my graduation?” She asked. Desperate to stay behind for the sake of her family. “Yes, what about it?” The man in the uniform asked the rector before continuing. “I’m sure the university administration won’t mind sending you your degree separate from your class. In fact, I think that is should be waiting for you at home as soon as you get there. Right comrade?” The rector shook his head and agreed. Just like that she was a doctor. No ceremony, no robes or coat, not even a swearing in.

“If I refuse?” Alex asked. Dipping into the last bit of courage left in her body. The man in the uniform turned around. “I advise you not to do that comrade. Eliza and Kara will not be as well taken care of if you were to say no.” Alex swallowed. Understanding his meaning.

 

 

When it was time to leave, Eliza handed her one of her old sweaters. “Alex, please, take this… it might get cold where they send you.” Alex shoot her head as she stared at her shoelaces. Pretending to have trouble with the knot as she swallowed down her tears. “Mama, I’ll be fine. The party gives you everything you need there. They gave me very clear instructions not to pack anything. If it’s cold they will give us jackets.” Eliza looked sad as she nodded. Folding the sweater before grabbing a brown parcel tied with yarn. “At least take this. You never know how long the journey will be.” Alex nodded and grabbed the food carefully. Staring at Kara at the end of the hallway. She didn’t have any trouble crying over this.

“Sasha.” Kara called Alex by her childhood nickname. Something they’d outgrown using when she turned 10 and Kara was 7. “Please Sasha, please say no.” Alex’s heart broke. She had tried to say no. To stay for Kara but they told her that to say no meant they would come after her family.

“Kasha.” Alex tried. Kara shook her head and turned away. “Please little buckwheat don’t be mad. It’s only half a year. I will be back as soon as I graduate from here too.” Kara sobbed as she threw herself into Alex’s arms. She was taller than her older sister but she always found comfort in being held by her. “Please Alex, you have to promise to come back. Please, please promise you won’t disappear like papa.” Alex nodded against her sister’s neck. “I promise Kasha. I promise little buckwheat I will come back because I will always take care of you.”

 

 

**_1941 – En route to Moscow_ **

Alex had to be evacuated out of the front lines. Her injuries bled as the ambulance jostled her body. The mud made driving harder but nobody could control the weather. She grits her teeth as they hit another pothole, a shooting pain traveling from her right shoulder all the way down to her fingertips. Others worse off than her had been given what was left of the painkillers in at the front. Even though she was valuable, she refused the special treatment and made them give her share to the other soldiers. As her head pounded and the blood traveled down her face she regretted this but didn’t complain.

 

 

**_1941 – Moscow_ **

Some party bureaucrat visited the hospital while she waited for her family. They pinned a Hero of the Soviet Union award next to the others onto a newly issued uniform that sat next to her bed and called her a hero. Said that she was the true spirit of the party. She looked at the star, shinning against the new uniform. Devoid of blood and not really feeling like hers. Alex frowned. Bring bag 100 Fritz dog tags to your superiors and this is what you get. 100 lives for one star. 100 boys that would never get to go back home. She wondered if that’s what the Germans thought of the butcher now. All cut up and unable to hold a rifle.

 

 

He gave her a clammy handshake and left. Alex couldn’t breathe.

 

 

“Sasha!” Kara shouted as she entered the room. Scattered groans could be heard from the others around them but Alex paid no attention. Smiling widely for the first time in what felt like forever. “You came back.” Was all Kara said as she squeezed her. Alex didn’t care about the pain. She was grateful at being able to live long enough to hug her little sister once again. “Of course, I came back Kasha. My little buckwheat, I promised I would never leave you.” Eliza stood at the foot of her bed, troubled expression on her face as she studied them.

Kara’s eyes widened as she pulled away. “Alex, is this yours?” She said in awe as she reached out to touch her new uniform. “That’s a medal for battle merit. And those are my two for one specials. You get one Order of Lenin for every Hero of the Soviet Union you receive.” Alex winked good naturedly as she told Kara what each award meant. Her mama hugged her and held her chin, inspecting her closely before talking. “You look a little tired, are they giving you enough for the pain?”

Alex looked away at her sister, who was trying on her hat and giving her a sloppy salute. “Soon I’ll be wearing one too.” Kara said off handedly. Alex bit her tongue before answering Eliza. “Yes mama, I’m fine.” Eliza nods before looking at Kara, her gaze softening. “My little sun, please be a good girl and get your mama something to drink from the offices. The nurses know you there.” Her little sister brightened and kissed them both on the forehead before running off. Loving whenever she could be helpful.

“Sweetie.” Her mother warned her. Alex swallowed. “I knew it. I haven’t even been back a day and here you are. Mad at me. Go ahead, say it.” Eliza huffed before answering. “I don’t understand how you could allow this. Letting your sister follow you into the war.” Alex tried to take a deep breath. Aggravating her arm and making her wince slightly. “She will do amazing things.” Alex told her. Eliza shook her head. “I know that, she has always done amazing things. And I am so very proud of her, but she is also putting herself in danger.”  

“She’s an adult.” Alex reminds her. “She’s 22. Kara is going to do things that you don’t like. That is not my fault.” Eliza smooths her blanket over her legs. “She’s always looked up to you. She only signed up because once again she has to be just like her big sister. Everything you have ever done she has always wanted to do. She has always been two steps behind you her entire life. So how would this be any different? Sign up for war and there goes Kara, running blindly, trying to catch up to Alex.”

Eliza takes in a sharp breath before continuing to berate her eldest daughter. “You know better. You should have stopped her.” She sighs. “I thought… I thought I could count on you to watch out for her. Alex stares down at her mother’s hands. “I do know better mama… and…” Kara chooses that moment to come in with three cups of tea. Handing one to Eliza first before blowing on the second one, tasting it, smiling, and giving it to Alex. “I made sure it’s not too hot for you.” Alex finds it easier to breathe as she looks at her little sister.

They drink their tea in silence until the silence makes Alex feel worse than when she was shot. She decides to break it. “So… what is this I hear about you joining the war?” Kara lights up and gently sets their glasses next to Alex’s uniform. “Alex, they had a posting at my university. I was between classes and saw that they were requesting female volunteers to train as fighter pilots. So of course I signed up. At the tryouts Lieutenant Marina M. Raskova was there herself. She picked me. Me!” Kara said incredulously. “Out of the thousands that signed up, only 1,000 actually made it. I made it. I leave by train next week.”

Eliza angrily set her tea down, dark liquid sloshing against white sheets. “How could you do this Alexandra?” Alex sat up straighter as she answered. “How could I do what mama? Devote my entire life to watch over Kara? Well… I don’t… I don’t know, maybe it’s because that’s what you’ve told me to do since she was born.”

“You could have stayed behind and been a doctor. Just like you studied for. Instead you lie to me about where you go and what you do. Jumping at the chance to go off to war.” Alex shakes her head before answering. “Is that what you got from this? That I didn’t tell you where I was going? Mama, Kara is about to risk her life to protect other people, and she’s your little sun. Always your hero. And yet I do the same and I’m in trouble?” Eliza shakes her head. “You think your papa is looking down proudly at you for this?” Alex sighs and leans her head back against the pillow. “I will never win with you.”

Kara makes a small sad noise before speaking up. “I don’t understand why you’re being like this mama.” Eliza shakes her head. “No, Kara, you don’t.” Kara’s forehead crinkled in confusion. “Why are you mad at her for my decision to volunteer? It’s not her fault that I decided to become a fighter pilot. That was my choice mama.” Eliza looked at Kara sadly. “I know.” Kara’s shoulder’s fell. “You’re always so much harder on her, mama, why?”

Before Eliza can answer, a nurse comes in and tells her she’s needed somewhere else. Eliza sighs. “I have to go handle this.”

 

 

**_1941 – 800 kilometers from Moscow_ **

As the Germans shelled her beloved city, Kara stared longingly at the plane that would be hers. She was still finishing up her training before she could join the 588th Night Bomber Aviation Regiment. Learning how to shoot a gun before she would be allowed to touch the two seater biplane that stole her heart. The male pilots, belonging to other regiments, snickered at them. Calling it a _Kukuruznik,_ meant to be an insult. Kara didn’t care that the Po-2 was a crop-duster. It was going to be her plane and she would be the best pilot out in the night skies. Protecting her mama and her sister, just like Alex had done for them.

 

 

**_1941 – Moscow_ **

Another shell hit the city, seeming to shake it to its core. Lights flickered everywhere and then there was darkness. Everything was lit up only by the moonlight. Alex ripped off the dog tag from her target, shouldered her rifle as tenderly as she could so as to not aggravate her still healing wounds, and headed home.

“Mama?” Alex asks the dark. “Yes?” Eliza answers from her bedroom. Their apartment is one of the few still standing in their building. The top floors are empty. The building is hollowed out by the bombs that fell onto the city when the Germans started flying overhead. Invading the motherland while the papers printed lies about how the Germans would never attack and that they were allies. The only ghosts left in the city were the old and stubborn. Or the soldiers keeping the city alive and people like her mama, the ones who wanted to help.

Alex peeks into the bedroom and sees her mother sitting on her bed. All the curtains are drawn tight and a single candle is the only source of light. Alex feels awkward but steps inside the threshold anyway. “Uh, there are blackouts all over the city. I… I wanted to be sure you were okay, mama.”

Eliza nods. “A blackout I can handle… you on the other hand.” Alex shakes her head. “Mama, please. I... I can’t fight anymore tonight.” Eliza sighs and pats the space next to her on the bed. “Sweetie… please… please come… come here.” At the sound of that pet name Alex’s body pushes her forward, even when she wants to stay mad at Eliza. “Please, just sit for a minute with your mama.”

“I’m so sorry for what I said about Kara. It isn’t fair… you… you always make the hard choice. You look to help others before yourself.” Alex interrupts. “That’s what you taught me to do. So why… why hasn’t that ever been enough?” Alex asks the one question she’s always needed answered. Her voice breaking as she starts to cry. No longer feeling like the butcher of men she has become, but rather a scared little girl that always craved her mother’s approval.

“If you mean why I was tough on you? Kara… Kara wasn’t your only sister.” Alex’s face reflects her confusion. “Kara was our miracle baby. There were others before her… two other perfect little girls. Both, just like Kara, were born too early...” Alex nearly misses their names as she thinks back to her childhood, how they were always the smallest family in the neighborhood and in all her classes. All her friends had so many brothers and sisters that the state gave their mothers medals for bearing and raising them. They followed each other, one after the other, like stairs. In her more selfish days, Alex wondered if Kara had been a mistake.

“Nadya and Valentina… they were born and became perfect little angels soon after. Your papa and I were devastated. How could God be so cruel as to take them away from us? How could two doctors, with so much knowledge, know nothing to save their own babies?” Her mother went on. “Kara was such a tiny baby and we had lost so much. It felt like we had lost everything. I didn’t know how to do anything but accept her. Always so afraid that she would die from every little sniffle.” Alex’s heart broke. Never knowing until now why Kara was favored so much by her parents. “You, you’re so strong Alexandra. You’re the one daughter I never had to worry about surviving… so I pushed you because I wanted you to be better than me. Better than your papa. But that never meant I didn’t love you. You have always been the one that taught me how to open my heart to all the beauty and love that comes from having daughters.” Alex hugged her mom and wept into her chest. “I’m sorry, mama.”

 

 

**_1942 – Terek River_ **

It started off as a typical mission. Meant to last less than an hour. She was the third in the sequence. She waited five minutes after Nina took off before lining up her plane at the end of the ripped-up fence that was serving as their runway. The muck so deep that it greedily tried to swallow up their wheels, keeping them earthbound. It had taken the better part of the day, hacking away at the fence with their blunt bayonets. A bygone from another era. Left to them like their uniforms. Hand me downs too old for the men to want and sitting too big on their small bodies.

Even if their planes were unwanted, the girls thought them better than the fancy bombers. They didn’t need paved runways to fly. Just the heart of a pilot and a small, flat surface to take off of.

Kara shot up into the crisp night air. Making the almost vertical climb with ease. 1,000 meters in the air. She took a deep breath, said a small prayer with closed eyes, and cut her engine off. As soon as the air was silent around her she began gliding down. Carefully tracking her descent until she felt like the tree tops could touch the belly of her plane.

As she reached the targets the only noise that followed her was the eerie whistling noise her bombs made as they dropped down.

She was maneuvering her plane back when searchlights flooded the area. Temporarily blinding her as they light up the field. Making them sitting ducks. She kicked her engine into gear and made a fancy turn from sheer panic alone. Something stupid and dangerous if they flew planes bigger than their little crop-dusters. Nina and her navigator, Katarina, only a couple of meters ahead of her, kept their plane steady.

It was the first night they lost anyone.

It still keeps her awake, what happened after the lights came on.

From training, they knew that their planes were never meant to see real battle. They were used at night only because they were sitting on tinderboxes. A hit from a single tracer round could set the whole thing ablaze. The horrified look of realization on her friend’s faces as they saw the flames lap up their plane still makes her heart stop. Tears streamed down Kara’s face. She threw half of her hand grenades towards one of the searchlights. Hoping that if she could just fly close enough, her friends could hop on.

It was stupid and dangerous. If they missed her plane, they would die. The women didn’t get something as precious as parachutes. Especially when they flew low enough to make them useless added weight on their planes.

Her friends blew up in front of her. As Kara tried to brace for the impact, her left foot slipped down into an empty space below herself. She didn’t have to look down to know that the bottom of her cockpit had been shot away by anti-aircraft fire. Kara raced back to their field as something hot streamed down her left arm and leg.

Her vision kept clouding. It could have been blood loss. She knew she was wounded. Or it could have been that she couldn’t get enough air into her lungs to properly take a breath. Everything feeling too tight and confining up in the night sky.

Kara roughly landed her plane and her friends ran to her side. Grabbing onto the ends of her wings to help guide the landing. Three girls had to pull her out. She could barely hold her head up. Her body was peppered with wooden shards from the shot-up aircraft.

 

 

**_1942 – Moscow_ **

They sent her home soon after that night. Not permanently grounding her. Just granting her a few weeks to recuperate before they would have her fly again. They gave her a medal in a small ceremony. Wanting to use her pictures in the papers as a way to bolster support for the war. To show the motherland how Russia had sons and daughters that were willing to pick up arms to defend her. Pretending that the brave women that were willing to die in the front lines weren’t mocked by the sons and brothers they were so fiercely trying to protect with their fire and bombs.

 

 

It was during that same trip when she became a traitor by choice. It was by pure happenstance that she met them. The two strangers that changed her life. She felt a pull towards them. Having never seen anyone with skin so tanned before. Kara’s fingers reached out to touch the man’s arm and before his elbow could make contact with her sternum, she flipped him over onto his back. Making the other woman laugh and introduce herself as “Maggie. Don’t you dare call me Margaret or I’ll toss you on your back much faster than that.”

It was hard for Kara to understand their thick accent. She knew they were American by the way they butchered their way through the French language. The only one they had in common.

From what she could gather, they were smugglers. John was the leader and Maggie was the charm. They had picked up some sort of package that needed to leave Moscow as soon as possible. It would be dropped off and they would keep picking up work until they made their way to the city of London.

Kara was on her third beer when she blurted out what was on her mind. Something akin to treason if overheard by the wrong people. “Can you… I mean… have you ever had to smuggle out people?” Maggie and John shared a look. They turned back to her and he nodded solemnly. Knowing exactly why she was asking but being smart enough not to say anything in a crowd. “Can I? I mean? How much to pay for you to deliver something to your final destination?” She asked, giggles breaking out of her as the thought of this being real.

When he told her, Kara spit beer all over herself. “Just for one person?” She half shouted. John shushed her and nodded again. “Okay. I… I will get you the money… I just… meet me here tomorrow at sunset.” Kara’s sloppy handwriting jotted down an address and she flipped the waterlogged napkin over, drawing a crude map to show them where.

She downed her beer and ran home.

 

 

The last time she saw her mama was above her father’s grave. It was a cloudy day. When she saw the strangers approaching, without any guards nearby, she knew her instincts had been right. She packed up the picnic she had been sharing with Eliza and waved them over. Her mama looked confused.

“Here. I know it’s not exactly what you asked for… but I lost more than I expected when changing it. I didn’t want to give you just Rubles. You have to be prepared.” Kara told John as she handed over a thick envelope with all of their savings. She’d had to sell everything that wasn’t bolted to their house to make up the rest, even some family heirlooms, but she didn’t care. After seeing her friends die, Kara knew that the war would swallow them whole. If her mama stayed she would burn to the ground. Spilling her blood for a party that thought them nothing more but props.

“Kara, what is this?” Her mama asked. Not quite understanding yet. “Mama, this is John and Maggie.” She introduced them as she handed her a duffle bag filled with all her things. “They’re going to take you to the city of London.” Eliza shook her head and cried. “No, little sun, please, please don’t do this.” Kara smiled sadly at her. “I will find Alex and tell her. I will let her know that we have to meet you at the Tower Bridge as soon as we get out of here. Just three tourists out in the world. Seeing all the things we wanted to see with papa.” She kissed her mother’s cheeks before meeting her eyes again.

“Little sun, this is treason. Your sister has had to shoot her brothers in arms for trying to do the same thing you’re suggesting I do.” Eliza shook as she explained. John and Maggie were pretending to count their money a couple of meters over, trying to give them some privacy while they said goodbye. Kara turned away. Reading her father’s grave. Wondering what would happen if she was shot down like Nina and Katarina. Would they fill her grave with stones and set her down in the dirt like him?

“I don’t care mama. I just need you to be safe. I need us to be safe. And that won’t happen if we stay here. You know that.” Eliza cried even harder. Not liking that she had to say goodbye to a life she spent years building into something she could be proud of. But she knew Kara was right. The party had taken her husband. It had taken her youth. And it would take her two daughters if she let them. Kara kissed the top of her head and held her tightly. “You can practice your English with them mama.” Eliza laughed. Kara huffed. “Please mama, you have to take care of them, they sound like they’re gargling seawater every time they speak French… they won’t get past the guards without your help mama.”

Eliza wiped her tears and kissed her daughter. “I will little sun. I will take care of them and you take care of your sister. You let her know that I’ll be waiting for you in the city of London for you both.” Kara nodded.

“Please take care of her… she’s very precious.” She told John in French. He nodded. Wondering if either one of his daughters would have made the same hard choice, had been alive long enough to be Kara’s age. John swallowed the lump in his throat. Kara impulsively hugs him, as if sensing his distress. “She is doctor. German. English. French. Please make alive.” Kara told him in broken English. He squeezed her back before she let him go.

 

 

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

After that night, they learned from their mistakes. Sometimes they would send out girls with their engines on. The unnerving rumbling clanging like a sewing machine, would make the Germans grit their teeth and lose sleep. This would draw a wall of enemy fire. The searchlights pointed at the wrong targets as two other planes silently dropped bombs down on the Germans. By the time the boys on the ground realized their mistake, another plane would fly by and shoot out the lights. Plunging everything in the dark.

The girls didn’t need radars to navigate their paths. They would work out their routes on the ground using worn maps and compasses.

Her group had almost completed their 10th mission, ready to call it a night, when dozens of German bombers came out of nowhere. Susanna, a gunner in another plane, used the light machine gun in the rear cockpit to shoot out two planes from the sky. Giving Kara ample time to maneuver out of there. Her little plane left the bombers behind as they struggled to turn back towards her.

Although she was unable to regroup with her friends, Kara had managed to land in near a relatively isolated field. The icy road and paths that remained thick with snow told her that whoever had lived here had long abandoned their home. She yawned as she cut the engine off and jumped down from her plane. She was tired and cold but happy. She was uninjured and alive.

She walked over to the closest building. A small, stone house that was half hidden beneath a curtain of snow. Kara groaned as she forced the door open with her shoulder. Raising and lowering her arm to ensure that she didn’t hurt herself. She broke up a chair with a couple of well-placed kicks and her bare hands. Building a fire in the hearth. Pulling her jacket above her ears, she shivered and laid down in front of it. Her body was so exhausted that she fell asleep almost immediately on the dirt floor.

 

 

The next morning Kara boiled a cup of snow and drank it as she struggled with her map. She didn’t know where she was in relation to their target. It was risky and stupid, but without another choice she knew what she had to do. Kara doused the flames with snow and headed back to her plane. Giving the blades of her plane a couple of twists she took a deep breath and smiled. The snow, the trees, the crisp air… it all made her think of home. Of winters spent climbing the hill behind their apartment building. Scrambling to find a spot to sled down. Begging her sister to let her sit in front of her as they sped towards the bottom. It made her heart hurt. Thinking of Alex. But soon… soon she would be able to see her and her mama. They would all be safe and away from this war.

 

 

When her plane was shot down all Kara could think of was her sister’s warm embrace and the way her mama held her face gently between her soft hands before kissing her eyelids.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you liked this, watch "Battle for Sevastopol." The first scene is taken right from there. Then re-watch "Livewire" Episode 4, Season 1 for the feels fest that is Eliza and Alex.
> 
> If you can make it 5k words without Kara and Lena meeting yet... you can make it to the next chapter, where they find each other ;)


	2. The Lion In Winter

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A young Englishwoman's transformation from business tycoon to spy begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter warnings: heterosexuality, descriptions of concentration camp horrors and "advanced interrogation" techniques (aka torture). All of this is historically accurate and I did keep it as brief as possible. Even then, it can still be too violent for some. If you want to avoid these don't read the sections for "Munich" and "Syrets concentration camp"

**_1939 – London_ **

When the Second World War began, Jack Spheer enlisted, joining the countless other patriotic men who saw it as their duty to raise up arms against the Axis Powers. He became a sergeant in the British army. Before being deployed, Jack kissed his young wife and their month-old son goodbye. Urging Lena to clean out their accounts and wait for him in America. As far away and as safe as possible from this mess as he could think of.

She smiled sadly at him and told him she would wait for him across the ocean. That she would write to him as soon as their boat passed Ellis Island. They both knew she was lying. Jack didn’t push against this. There was no point in fighting before he left. It was better to pretend that Lena would listen to him. Pretend that she wasn’t as headstrong as when they had first met a year ago. Lilian had scoffed and called her stubborn. She fell for the wrong type of man and married him anyway.

 

They met in France. At the beach. It was a hot day and the place was packed with visiting English families, just like hers. Her parents opted to stay on their private bit of sand. Lena wandered off and thought he was so tall and handsome. Jack had a neatly trimmed beard and wore a suit with the pant legs rolled up. Like he hadn’t planned to be there but tried to make the best of it anyway. He sat and read near the shore. Pretending not to see the way families picked up and moved their belonging away from him. As if he were a leper. Lena took her things and sat closer. Always wanting to be brave, to be different from her family, but never understanding quite how.

Jack looked up. His kind eyes took her in and he told her that she should move her things further away. Lena told him that this side of the beach was less crowded. He looked up from his book and smiled. “Maybe they left because they don’t want to get in trouble.” Lena bit her lip. “Well where is the fun in that?”

 

 

**_1940 – London_ **

Losing Lex hadn’t exactly softened her mother. She still refused to meet her grandson, Leonard. But she did entrust Lena with running the company.

Entrusting was perhaps too strong a word.

Fleeing the city for their country estate and leaving Lena to pick up the pieces as investors clamored for something to be done was a more accurate description of what really happened.

Lena didn’t care, she had a company to run.

 

 

When the first bombs hit the city, shaking it to its core, the government told civilians that they were safe. The Germans had specific targets. None of those were within civilian centers. As they kept leveling more buildings, blanketing the city with unfocused destruction, Lena understood how hurtful deception could be. Even if Lilian had taught her that since she was a child.

The institution of blackouts and evacuation of children by the trainload out of the city felt like an admission of guilt. They never told the public there was something to worry about. Just blasted the air raid sirens and urged people to carry goggles and air masks. “In case of a chemical attack,” they claimed. Lena didn’t know how to be brave then either. However, she knew a captive market and a business opportunity when one presented itself.

 

 

By the time a lot of the city’s factories, along with her own, had been reduced to rubble and ash, her operation was running deep below the surface for a couple of days. All the production equipment had been moved into the belly of the city. Haphazardly converting miles of the London Underground into an operation so vast that a small train had to be put in place to move components from one end of the tunnels to another. An operation so secretive that government officials had sent agents to work besides the women that spent countless hours on their feet. Always on the lookout for potential spies or saboteurs.

Lena felt the damp soak into her bones but didn’t complain. She had a business to run. Even as the bombs continued to fall above them. They kept working. The lights flickered. The floor shook. Still they worked in shifts. Running 24 hours a day. Their drawings would blow right off the table due to the shockwaves of bombs exploding and they would simply pick them up and keep producing. All of the key components for creating weapons and tanks came out of her factory. They couldn’t afford to stop. If only her pieces could be built into another machine gun, then maybe, just maybe, a German would die instead of one of their own.

 

 

Things began to change during the winter. It started when the men in colorless uniforms approached her on her way to work. Or maybe they were in color and her world faded to grey as she understood that they were only here for one reason. She had tried to pay attention when they offered their rehearsed and empty platitudes. Calling Jack a hero. Instead of calling him what he really was, a bloody fool. He had left Leon and Lena alone. Now she was empty.

She didn’t know how to deal with this. She couldn’t deal with this. So she turned as cold as the day. Offered them a curt nod and a firm handshake, the way her father had taught her. She told them that she didn’t have time for this. She was late for work.

Outside everything was normal. Inside she was so shaken by the encounter that she didn’t notice Jess crying in her office until she nearly sat on her. Instead of asking why she was here long after her shift was over, Lena awkwardly hovered. Fingers uselessly grabbing at air. She wanted to comfort her but didn’t exactly know how to do it. Her family wasn’t known for its warmth or hugs.

Thankfully Jess was raised differently. She broke the silence with an explanation. “We… my family… we have nowhere else to go… nobody will rent to us… and… and… we’ve lost everything.” Lena reached out and patted Jess’ forearm twice before withdrawing. “There. There. Don’t be sad.” She said, wincing at how formal she sounded. Jess blew her nose and smiled. “Thank you… I’m sorry for this… I just… I think I need a minute… I don’t know what to do.”

Those words slotted that second bit of change into place. “You could always move in with me?” Her voice, uncertain, ticks upward at the last word. Jess stares. “Your choice.” Lena tries to backtrack without withdrawing the offer. She’s not as cold as the society pages paint her out to be. She just feels out of depth in most situations that require all of this emotional tact. Jess nods. Without hearing an actual ‘no’ to her suggestion, Lena reaches into her purse. “You can help yourself to your choice of the spare rooms... and do go down to Selfridges… replace what your family lost and have it charged to my account.”

Jess was stunned. “Thank you Mrs. Sphere.” Lena smiled sadly. “No. Just Luthor now…” Jess swallows and looks at her with understanding. “Of course Miss Luthor.” Lena swallows and turns away. All she had now was her family’s legacy and her son. That included manufacturing what the war effort needed. No time to mourn. She gets up and walks out of the office. Feeling suffocated and needing to surround herself with work. Work that was being completed by women who were very much alive and still standing as the world fell to pieces around them. Women who were still breathing. Just like her. Just like Jess.

 

 

Jess had tried to stay out of Lena’s hair at the beginning. Not knowing how to navigate living with her boss while caring for her shut-in father. Lena was still trying to put Jack’s death out of her mind, preferring to work 14 hour shifts than come home. Too busy exhausting herself so she would be able to do everything but mourn him. It was easy to avoid interacting too much with each other during those early days.

 

 

Leonard broke their routine of avoidance strategies. Jess had only been at work for an hour, running the office during the night shift, as she normally did. Lena was sleeping off another unnecessarily long shift. Her son, as he often did when he woke up and found himself unable to soothe himself back to sleep, climbed out of his crib. He had his mother’s mind. Breaking out of his room he slowly made his way down the hall towards Lena. Tonight was different. Mr. Fung’s door was cracked open. Jess leaving in a hurry and not fully closing it. The soft sounds of the radio called out to him and he let himself in.

Lena awoke with a start. Her heart was racing and although she didn’t remember her dreams, she knew Jack was in them. She sighed and got out of bed. Without Leon in the room, she would have to seek out the familiar comfort she found when his arms wrapped around her neck and his fingers pulled at her hair. Fascinated by the way it was as black as the city outside their window.

Lena heard his melodious laughter coming from inside the wrong room. “Leon?” she asked outside the door. “Right in here Miss Luthor, please, come in.”

Walter Fung was a slighter man than Lena imagined. He was propped up on several pillows, playing with her son. They hadn’t met before that day. And Lena understood why the minute her eyes move downward. “You’re an invalid.” Lena pointed out, confused as to why Jess never mentioned that this was the reason why her father was a shut-in. Mr. Fung smiled. “Yes… war is never kind to the boys it forces to grow up into men.”

 

 

Several weeks later Lena’s delivery came in all the way from America. It had the proud Everest & Jennings logo printed right on the crate. For an extra couple of pounds, Lena persuaded the young men to open the package, carry it upstairs and place Walt on it.

Jess cried when she saw her father out of his bed and laughing. It was the first time in years that he willingly left the confines of his room. Her family had tried to build him a wheelchair, seeing as they were exorbitantly expensive. It was 30 kilograms… too heavy and cumbersome to be useful in the cramped two-bedroom apartment Jess, her father, and three brothers shared. He refused to sit on it, shutting himself further away from the world outside his four walls.

Leon, fascinated by Walt already, found him irresistible now. Always wanting to climb onto his lap and crying when Jess tried to get him to do anything else. Lena would often apologize on his behalf and Leon would launch himself into her arms. Happily babbling and looking over at Walt.

Her father, livelier than she had ever seen him, started to slowly join the world again. He still refused to leave the house, but he started to wander the halls. Always following behind Leon’s uncertain wobbles. Feeling as if they were both learning how to navigate the world together. Each unsteady in their own way.

 

 

 

**_1942 – London_ **

 

The final bit of change that turned her life upside down was a BBC broadcast. On behalf of the government the BBC was encouraging citizens that had any holidays snapshots of French, Belgian or Dutch Channel or North Sea beaches in them to please send in their photographs to The Admiralty. Telling citizens that this would help them prepare raids that could prove decisive in taking back Europe from the Axis powers.

As Lena drank gin and looked over the photos of the beach she had first met Jack in, she felt anger. She kept drinking as she selected the best pictures of the beaches she had visited as a child. She put them all in a big envelope and sloppily wrote what she remembered to be the address from the program on top. As an afterthought, she attached a small note in the envelope before sealing it, letting them know that she was fluent in French and knew France particularly well due to her family taking holidays in that country every year. She signed it letting them know that she was a patriot and wanted to help any way she could.

 

She had put the drunken night out of her mind until she was contacted by a Frenchman weeks later. He told her that her letter to the War Office landed on his desk. Lena, realizing that a drunken mistake had probably gotten her in trouble with the government, didn’t tell him she hadn’t meant to send the letter to him.

The Frenchman explained that he was part of the SOE or the Special Operations Executive. An organization created by the government to conduct espionage, sabotage, and reconnaissance across occupied Europe. He was in charge of sabotage against the Axis powers while aiding the French government and he was wondering if Lena would oblige him with an in-person meeting.

When she agreed, he sent for Lena that very day.

After talking for a few minutes, it was clear to him that her Parisian accented French was an asset to the war effort. This, coupled with her demeanor made her the perfect candidate to pose as a Frenchwoman without raising any suspicions. As the meeting went on and Lena told him a bit about herself, he understood that her intelligence with designing and producing things for the war effort could prove crucial when the time came.

He asked her to take a day or two to think it over before accepting his offer to join the SOE in France. Wanting to use the anger and passion he detected was inside her. He knew that she was listless and he thought that by offering her a purpose, he could use her as an effective weapon against the Germans occupying his beloved country.

 

 

 

**_1942 – Paris_ **

 

When she arrived in Paris, Lena had to set up her own small group of resisters. It started with two other people. Growing from there. She developed and grew her own network of trusted allies. Consisting of rogues, spies, and smugglers. Their job was to attack power stations, bridges, and any other piece of key infrastructure that could cripple the German operation. She taught them how to plan explosives and set them off.

 

When she was captured, Lena was shocked. Not because she had been careless. She just thought herself so insignificant in the grand scheme of the war that she didn’t know she was in danger. When they shot civilians in the middle of the street as a way to discourage citizens from joining the resistance, Lena didn’t think it had anything to do with her work. She was simply a lost little girl, playing at war and trying to stay alive for her son. Lena saw herself as a widow without a way to properly grieve and be upset at the world.

Lena failed to understand that the Germans had a dossier on her and had been following her for the past couple of days as she went on her normal routine of pretending to be just another girl in Paris. She didn’t know her worth to the Gestapo until her head met the butt of a riffle and she was dragged to an undisclosed location.

 

 

 

**_1942 – Munich_ **

 

Lena’s entire body was submerged into a bath filled with ice. She gasped and felt like she would drown had it not been for the two men quickly pulling her up. “Ahh, Miss Lena Luthor. So nice of you to join us again.” Lena blinked slowly. Her teeth chattered. She was disoriented. She didn’t know who this man was. He wasn’t the last officer that had talked to her. “How very rude of me, my name is General Müller.” She was dipped into the tub a couple of more times.

“Do you happen to know what verschärfte vernehmung is?” He laughed as she shivered. Trying uselessly to stay warm in her thin gown. “No, of course you don’t.” She was submerged again. “See, what we are doing is an intensified interrogation due to your… what is the word…” He snapped his fingers a couple of times and then smiled. “Uncooperative. You see you were very uncooperative when we first asked you a couple of simple questions.” Lena was taken out of the bathtub and found it impossible to stand. Even with the vice-like grip of her captors on her arms. “Now then Miss Luthor, I will ask you once more: who are you working for?”

Lena was scared and still her voice did not waiver. “Fine, I’ll tell you.” The General smiled. “See, it is not so bad. You and I. Working together to find this truth.” Lena focused her eyes and told him what he needed to hear. “His names is go blow it out your arse you—” The first blow caught her on the stomach. When the second blow hit, the doctor stepped in and held General Müller’s stick back. “That is all you’re authorized to do today. Her body must recover now.” The General picked up the doctor and plunged him into the ice-cold bath before storming out of the room.

 

 

 

**_1943 – En route to Dachau_ **

 

After months of fruitless interrogation sessions, Lena was loaded up onto a train along with four other British female agents, a British male agent, and 43 male prisoners. During the transportation Lena recognized the familiar sound of planes flying overhead.

Seconds later their car lurched forward and the world exploded around them.

The Allies were carrying out an air raid nearby and they had hit some of the train cars due to them releasing their cargo enthusiastically early. The prisoners started panicking. It was chaos. Everyone started running around in every direction. Trying to escape.

Lena knew that this was her chance to return home. She started running when another bomb hit. The shockwave knocked everyone down. She got up and through muffled ears she heard the cry of a small child. A little girl was lost and crying for her mother. The dirty yellow star on her coat made Lena look up. There was another train, with dozens of cars. It meant that hundreds of people were looking at her, all wearing that star on their coats.

She ran towards the closest cart and threw the doors open. Urging people to jump out and run. Their hollow eyes just stared. Lena urged them to jump out once again and before anyone could react, shots rang out. Bodies started falling around them. Heavy boots and shouting started getting closer to where they were. Lena reacted without thinking, simply wanting to save the girl. She grabbed her and threw herself onto the train.

The officers came around, shot at the last remining prisoners and as Lena began to stand up due to the lack of room to accommodate her lying down, the last thing she heard was the muffled sound of the closing latch.

 

 

 

**_1943 – En route to Syrets concentration camp_ **

 

The railway car, with the doors closed and the grills shut to prevent escape, was almost pitch black inside. Air entered only through the cracks. It was sweltering.

They traveled for what felt like a whole day before the doors were opened and they were given water. There was no food, no place to rest, no room to do anything. The cart was cramped and Lena was hungry and thirsty. But the desire to see Leon one more time gave Lena the strength to remain on her feet. To forget everything else.

 

 

 

**_1943 – Syrets concentration camp_ **

 

When they arrived, men were pointing rifles at them and barking out orders. Lena didn’t understand them. She tried to follow along with everyone else but it was overwhelming. Everyone else seemed to know exactly what needed to be done. She was scrambling to join a line when man got in front of her face and began pointing and shouting. Lena failed to comply fast enough and she got a rifle to the chest. Before she could be executed, another officer intervened. Although he joined her on the ground soon after, she didn’t get killed. In fact, she was saved.

The man on the ground asked someone else a question and they produced their papers. Lena got the message and pulled hers out of her coat. The officer kept stealing glances at her as he read it to himself. He jumped up excitedly and animatedly began to explain why he was so happy that Lena was there to the violent man. Even his anger dissipated. Changing into a wolfish glee that made Lena’s stomach pool with dread.

“Miss Luthor. Hello. There has been a misunderstanding. I apologize. I am Henri and this is my commandant Paul von Radomski. Please come with us to your new accommodations.” They both led her towards the nicest building in the complex. Just outside the barbed wire.

 

 

After spending some time with them both it was easy to see that Commander Radomski was a sadistic drunk who often suffered fits of rage. The men under his command thought him cruel and often wanted to avoid him, especially when he got into a bottle. He would punish them too if he felt that they weren’t being harsh enough to the prisoners and the Jews within the camp. Commander Radomski also lashed out at Lena if she couldn’t avoid him in the cramped space they shared within the commandant’s quarters.

He would have her thrown into solitary confinement. Her legs would shake for days afterwards after being released from the tiny, stand-up prison cell. For it was too narrow to sit down in. She had to sleep on her feet and only given water to drink when she was down there.

His adjunct, Henri, was the one to always fetch her. He was the only one in the camp that spoke English. Henri would give her extra food whenever this happened. Lena would hide away anything that was non-perishable under her bed. She didn’t plan to stay long enough to be publicly flayed and then shot if Radomski ever thought she was no longer a valuable enough asset to be kept alive.

 

 

Her plan was put into motion a few weeks into the prisoner’s new work detail. Hundreds of chained prisoners were forced to disinter half-naked men from within layers of mud and soot. They carried the corpses a couple of feet over, burned them, and scattered the ashes on nearby farmland. They continued with their macabre work and unbeknownst to their captors, stole any tools and scraps of metal they could manage to find amongst the corpses and concealed them.

The day the prisoners revolted was when she escaped. They picked the locks from their chains and overpowered the guards using the tools they had stolen: rusted hammers pummeled into their captors and screw drivers were jabbed into tender flesh. Those that weren’t so lucky merely used their bare hands.

The chaos became her cover.

Lena overloaded the electrified fence that surrounded the camp, took her makeshift knapsack with her supplies, and ran out into the night.

 

 

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

A giant fireball ignited the morning sky. Dirty red and orange flames were broken by the three German bombers that flew through them. What used to be a plane fell from the heavens in pieces. Raining down over the trees above them. An inhuman sound left her mouth as Lena realized that a man was falling from the sky without a parachute trailing behind him. Her heart sunk. She didn’t think about what she was doing, she simply started to run blindly towards the debris. Not thinking about the danger.

A freshly falling curtain of snow cut off her escape route. Branches snapped and a body hit the forest floor. Cushioned by dead leaves and snow. Lena’s knees hit the ground next to his face and turned him over. Unfocused blue eyes met hers, drawing a sharp breath from Lena’s lungs. A bloody smile followed and the downed pilot wheezed something in a language other than German before gingerly touching her face with bloodied fingers and passing out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully this chapter wasn't too violent... Especially because Alex's chapter, coming up next, is going to have more of the horrors of war. Not glorifying it, just showing how terrible it can be on the people that survive.


	3. The Butcher Walks Through The Flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex betrays the party, but this is only the beginning of her journey from hero to something else. Just like her sister, she wakes up one morning and never makes it home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took way longer than I thought it would take to write. I scrapped it about three times before finishing this. I hope it was worth the wait!

 

**_1942 – Stalingrad_ **

 

The first time Alex decides to betray the party coincides with the first time she ever shoots a man while looking at his face. Seeing the life drain out of his eyes is different than watching them go down through the sight on top of her rifle. She thought she was used to the war by now.

 

She was unprepared to kill this way.

 

She throws up soon after.

 

It happens three days before the chaos. She received a sloppily opened letter from Kara. It’s nothing others haven’t encountered before. The party knows all and sees all. Sometimes this means that private letters get read. Alex has nothing to hide so she ignores the smug grin coming from the newly minted intelligence office Mikhail Matveyev. He used his father’s connections to land the job after he failed to make the cut as a soldier in the red army.

“Were you the one that read this then, Comrade Matveyev?” Alex asks, voice disinterested as she unfolds the letter. Kara’s beautiful cursive jumps out at her, a far cry from her own blocky script. She never could write beautifully with ink dragging across the paper as her left hand struggled to make sense of things.

Mikhail smirks. “Of course I did. The People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs received an interesting report about your mother disappearing into the night.” His chest puffs up with self-importance as he continues. “Normally it would have been lost within the confines of bureaucratic incompetence… if it hadn’t been for my keen sense of justice.” Alex smiles condescendingly. “Of course.” She plays along. Placating his fragile ego. Still smoldering from Kara’s rejection. She found war more appealing than him having her hand in marriage.

His words become static in the background as she reads through Kara’s lengthy description of the excitement she felt at seeing herself in the paper after being awarded her very own Hero of the Soviet Union medal. Alex smiled. Her sister truly was amazing. When she got to the second page, the words swam together. Understanding painfully dawning on her why Mikhail bothered to make the journey to an active war front to personally to drop off her mail.

Kara told her that she took all their money and sent their mother to the city of London with two Americans. Kara expected Alex to meet them both there as soon as she could. Regardless of the outcome of the war. With a clear intent to deflect, she effectively branded them all enemies of the state. What was worse is that her little buckwheat didn’t grasp the enormity of her actions. She finished the letter by telling her that she was fully healed and heading back to the skies as soon as she mailed off this very letter.

Mikhail laughed, knowing that Alex understood what Kara didn’t. That her actions would have a ripple effect on their lives. “You see I haven’t gone to my superiors with this… yet… but when I do—” The shot echoed off the walls and blood splattered against her skin. Her gun drawn and smoking before Alex realizes what she’s doing. She didn’t think. Pure instinct took over. Alex needed to protect Kara against another threat.

He gurgled a confused sound as his eyebrows knitted together. Drowning in his own blood as he fell. Alex knew she had punctured a lung. His panicked face stared back at her, eyes blinking with tears, locked onto her until they could no longer focus on anything in the room. He stopped struggling. No longer reaching up twitching hands for help at her.

Alex emptied her stomach on the table next to them and cried.

 

 

They found a cold body and an even colder Alex hours later. Her gaze of steel and her words left room for no further questions. She decried Mikhail Matveyev a panic monger and a coward that needed to be exterminated on the spot, per Order No. 227.

 

****

****

**_1942 – Stalingrad_ **

 

Three days after that incident, on a Sunday afternoon, the air raid sirens rang out. People, unaware of what was to come, stayed out on the streets, thinking it was only a drill. Alex would have been one of them if she were across the Volga river. Instead she had just finished making a formal declaration as to why she had invoked Order No. 227 against an intelligence office a couple of days earlier to a room full of high commanders.

She was laughing along with some boys from Moscow, trading cigarettes for sweets, as she waited for a makeshift ferry to free up. Ready to go back over the Volga and resume her post after being cleared of any wrong doing. Like her comrades, she laughed at the joke that the sirens weren’t a system wide test but in fact a tribute to the failure of Soviet engineering. Where someone tried to switch on a light and instead caused the whole city to panic over nothing.

Then they heard it. A rumble. A terrifying rumble came from the left bank of the Volga. There were air formations. Everyone whispered about an exercise being done by their aircraft and having no idea why it was happening so close to the city. Especially when the bombers flying overhead were so numerous. Then they heard the eerie whistling break through the sky. Closer and closer until the explosions began. There was nothing to do as everyone stared in horror.

 

They all remain frozen as vivid red gives way to bright yellow flames. Swallowing building after building. The whole city is burning up like a petrol soaked newspaper and all they can do is watch. Alex’s feet carry her into the river. She drops onto her knees. Her head is shaking back and forth as her eyes see everything in front of her but her brain is unable to understand the sheer monstrosity of it all. _“People are still in there… the city wasn’t evacuated.”_ She thinks over and over.

The German bombers soar over the flames. A couple of seconds later, they fly directly above them and bombs drop all around them. It seemed to her that the surface of the water caught fire first, and then the ships began to burn soon after.

 

****

****

**_1942 – Stalingrad_ **

 

After a lull of several days, following the initial attack upon the city, Alex was on-board a small boat, making her way across the Volga towards the city. Although she was not part of the Rodimstev division, she was equipped with their weapons just the same, with one exception, she kept her trusty sniper rifle in her hands.

Their boat cut through the water in the dead of night and everything was silent, save for the sound of their oars hitting the water. The flames that kept consuming Stalingrad guided them forward, like the Kremlin stars of her hometown. As soon as the first boats got close to the edge, they were spotted by the enemy and the magic was broken.

There was shouting across the river. Followed by artillery fire. Launching them into chaos. The boat next to them blew up. The shockwaves overturned them and those that didn’t know how to swim with the added weight of their packs, drowned.

Alex kicked her feet underneath her and swan towards the shore. Her rifle was held firmly above her head, both hands gripping so tight they turned white. Once she was able to stand, she waded towards an empty boat that bounced along with the waves. Up and down. Up and down. The men that made it safely to the shore were instantly plunged into battle. The Germans had the high bank, giving them a huge advantage, as they had an unobstructed view of everyone as they landed. Making it easy to spray her comrades full of bullets. Soon enough, the sand was soaked in blood. So thick even the water couldn’t wash it away.

 

If she could just get up there, she knows she can make a difference.

Taking a deep breath, Alex took aim and fired. Flying true and finding its target, a body fell from above. People cheered as another followed soon after. Inspiring those around her.

 

Steady and slow, Alex moved forward.

As more men landed, she got swept up in a tide of bodies and soon she had to use her shovel to save herself from a German that had just finished reloading. She didn’t even think about collecting his tags or anyone else’s as another Fritz came at her. Alex dug her sharpened trenching shovel into the side of his neck as he charged towards her, eyes filled with rage and fists swinging.

No longer able to hide behind her scope, Alex kept hacking her way further away from the embankment.

At first, only the threat of death kept her from shutting down. As the night wore on she felt numb to the brutal, bloody fighting she was a part of. It was as if she was outside her body, floating above the fighting. Not understanding that the deep, guttural sounds were coming from her own throat. That she was the reason the boys in grey uniforms were so terrified that they froze in fear or worse, would shoot themselves before they climbed up after them. It was as if she was a doll and someone else was controlling her body. Pushing her to move one foot in front of the other and take a swing at everyone that crossed her path.  

She didn’t feel the first pats of victory on her back because of this. It took her a couple of breaths to realize that she was laughing so hard she was crying. She wasn’t the only one that was overjoyed. Some of the younger boys, the ones with guard badges, wearing brand new uniforms, were worse off than her. They were crying and holding each other, shaking like leaves. Their eyes as red as their bloodied hands. Still, they stood atop of Mill No. 4, victorious and elated at having survived the fight to the top.

 

****

****

**_1942 – Stalingrad_ **

 

The Germans had been forced back the next couple of days and they had been able to secure the railway station in addition to the old grain elevator. Alex was lying on the ground, in between the rubble. Pretending to be dead as she waited for her targets. The tank was stuck in a mountain of broken bricks and instead of being pelted with Molotov cocktails, it had been left intact. Sooner or later someone would be sent to either fetch it or destroy it so her comrades couldn’t use it as a weapon against the Fritz.

Alex suppressed a yawn as she looked through her scope again. Right on cue a small team of boys were sent to check on the tank. They were angrily discussing something and the biggest one of them shoved a smaller boy back before pointing towards the tank. He looked to be about 14, his helmet sat too big on his head. He nodded. She waited, watching as he twisted the bottom off of the stick grenade and threw it down at his feet. As soon as he pulled the string, she took the shot.

His friends wasted precious seconds looking around for the shooter and trying to see if he was still breathing instead of running. A could of smoke and limbs was all Alex saw as she dropped her head back down. After a couple of minutes without any shots ringing out in her direction she started the slow journey back to the grain elevator. It was only a couple of meters, no more than 30, but the incessant shooting and air raids meant that she could only get there by crawling on all fours.

 

 

**_1942 – Stalingrad_ **

 

The fire set by the Germans was so thick that Alex had trouble carrying the only other survivor out of it. His leg was injured, shrapnel was imbedded in the muscle. Too deep to dig out with her fingers while out in the field. Alex coughed as she tried to orient herself to any possible escape route that wasn’t blocked by fire or piles of rubble.

She shifted Nikolai’s arm on her shoulders as he winced and pointed at the stairs across the room. Out of the 45 men and women stationed to hold the grain elevator, only the two of them were left alive. The flames that were consuming the grain, lit by the Germans so that they would either starve later or perish now, seemed to be licking at their heels. Waiting for them to slip up so that they could be devoured too. Flying bullets lodged themselves in the brick walls around them, having no real targets to hit, as their enemy was shooting blindly into the rooms above them. The smoke acting as a diversion as they made their getaway.

 

Alex set Nikolai down as gently as she could before ripping the bombs off of a fallen comrade’s belt. She grabbed his drum magazines, gave them to Nikolai and headed towards another body to reload her own submachine gun. “Stay here. I will clear out an escape route and come fetch you.” Nikolai nodded. Not knowing how they would survive given that the Germans were much stronger than them. In Stalingrad, you were considered a veteran if you survived two days. They had men that had been invading the motherland for over a year.

She patted his good knee and kept low to the ground. Before entering the room next door she threw in a grenade then charged in, in the wake of the blast with her machinegun firing rounds into concussed Germans. She ran back into a room quickly filling with smoke and made her way forward once again. She repeated this routine another time before they were able to escape through a hole in the wall of the first floor. Although their bodies were bruised and bloodied, the enemy surrounding them, and they were choking on smoke, they got lucky.

Nikolai knew that luck was the only reason as to why they managed to escape that night. Especially when they both looked into the eyes of death dozens upon dozens of times. It seemed to him that Stalingrad would swallow up the whole of the soviet army before the siege ended.

 

 

**_1943 – Stalingrad_ **

 

Since the fire at the grain elevator, they have gone hungrier than before. Most days, like everyone else, Alex was only able to eat a single slice of bread. Other days, if they were lucky, they would catch a rat to cook or even a dog that wandered too close to their encampment inside a shell of a building.

 

 

Once, a woman had given her a whole potato because she didn’t shoot her children when they attempted to fill water bottles for German soldiers in exchange for a crust of bread. She bit into it raw, like an apple. Taking huge bites and trying not to choke as she greedily ate it alone.

 

 

The next time she saw the woman, she was naked and Alex was standing over the body of an impostor that filled her clothes a little too well. Alex removed the head covering and wasn’t surprised to see a man’s face beneath it. She stripped him of the stolen clothes and stared at his handsome face as the woman, Florentina, dressed herself. Alex didn’t know what to think, she imagined that they would look like monsters, maybe even hide horns under their steel helmets. But this man, he was young and he looked like an Olympian athlete with his broad shoulders and strong arms. He had curly hair and he was well fed. If she could feel anything besides hunger and exhaustion, she was sure that she could have been attracted to someone like him.

Maybe in another life.

Alex followed Florentina home. It was a hole in the ground. The whole apartment building was leveled. There was nothing left. Florentina lifted the cabinet door that kept the rubble and dust out of what used to be a room and calls out for her children. Four little faces peek up from the dark. All grimy and dressed in rags, but alive. She thinks of her baby sister. And she can’t bear to leave them to their fate. “Pack everything you need and follow me. We’re going to play a game.” She tells the kids. The other woman looks uncertain.

Alex explains the rules of their game to the boys and the little girl. She used to be the neighbor’s kid, Florentina had whispered, now she was her daughter. If her husband were still alive, he would have been overjoyed. Her chest felt tight. Alex crouched down and told them that they were hiding from the wolves. They had to keep their heads down and hug the buildings until they got to the safe zone. Only then could they win the game. The children took the game very seriously. Always a couple of steps behind Alex, stifling their giggles and shushing each other. Making careful work of following her as closely and quietly as possible. Wanting to make their way to the safe zone as so that they could win the game and maybe suggest a new one.

German snipers only tried to kill them twice as they traversed the ruins of the city. They missed both times. Alex shook her head, thinking that perhaps they had been too busy eating well to worry about training. She would have never wasted ammunition like that. Out of all the shots she’s taken, she’s never missed one. She remembers all the bodies she has left in her quest for survival in Stalingrad. Not even for something as insignificant as another medal. Just wanting to get out of this hellhole alive. She frowns. She guesses she’s had a lot more practice than they have.

When they reach the basement of the building, Alex tells Florentina that she’s safe here. That all the men here will protect her and her family. There are a couple of more civilians down there. Some children for her kids to play with. Their eyes light up, and they run around, playing tag. Forgetting about wolves hiding outside in the winter snow.

 

****

****

**_1943 – En route to Kursk_ **

 

Alex took a deep breath and relaxed. After going months without being able to wash herself she finally felt clean. Gone was the dried blood that turned her fingernails black if she did not use her knife to clean them. All the grime and dirt that came from sleeping on the ground or on her feet, too exhausted or terrified to move an inch, lest she be killed by enemy fire. It was all gone and she finally felt clean. Clean and human.

A few tears escaped from the corners of her eyes as she looked up at the roof. Who knew that something so simple could make her feel like a person again. Even if it was for a small moment, she let herself smile and be happy. Enjoying the steam bath. A huge luxury that seemed to be less of a rarity amongst the front lines for her and the others.

The knock on the door drew her out of her thoughts. “Comrade Danvesky? The tailor shop has fixed your uniform.” Came a voice before the other girl came in and set her clothes down. “Thank you.” Alex smiled tiredly at her. She closed her eyes and pretended not to notice how the other girl stared openly at her body. Trying to guess which scars came from which battles. Some newer ones were still pink and raw. Healing.

Alex stood up and began putting her uniform on. “Was there something else?” She asked and the other soldier’s cheeks turned pink with embarrassment as she looked down at her boots. “Yes, forgive me… the General wishes to speak with you.”

 

****

****

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kursk_ **

 

Even out here, in the outlying villages, the Germans could not suppress the growing unrest among the people. Although largely untrained, when compared to the Red Army, the partisans still had been enough of a threat that the enemy had hung rows of bodies outside the villages as a warning to those that would oppose them.

Still, they refused to obey. Resisting at every turn. Even as entire villages were burned alive.

Due to her sniper training in addition to her ability of being able to survive under the harshest battle conditions, Alex was tasked with a new mission. She was to be the official liaison between the regional partisans outside of Kursk and the Red Army. Her objective was clear: train anyone who could hold a rifle to shoot. Then, when the time came, they would lead a coordinated attack upon the Germans.

 

 

****

****

**_1943 – The Dnieper River_ **

 

Given her success at Kursk, Alex was once again sent to the outskirts of a major city before it was meant to be hit. She would look for partisans and train them.

Her mission ran into a wall before she could even leave the base. The Dnieper River was proving to be impossible to cross. The Germans had blown up bridges that led across it. Her Generals ordered the tanks to be made watertight and insisted that they be simply be driven towards the enemy.

It was no use. The water was too deep.

Soldiers had built makeshift rafts from trees in order to cross it.

It was no use. The German fire proved too deadline and they couldn’t quite get a foothold on the other side of the Dnieper.

After the initial victories, it was frustrating to see how uncoordinated the army was.

 

Alex told her superiors that she would find her own way across and would meet them in Kiev.

 

It was the last they ever heard of her.

****

****

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

Her fur boots sank in the snow. She looked towards the horizon and back down around her. She saw drops of blood and smiled.

She had found them.

Alex had been chasing the German officer and his companion for some miles now. Step by step, shot by shot, she would force them out.

She refused to fail.

It was almost a game now. Chasing after them. And the thing about games, there is always a winner and there is always a loser.

Alex headed towards the trees. Even without a trail of blood to lead her there, it was the most likely hideout for two men on the run.

She moves slowly and with purpose. Every step calculated. Still she comes up empty. No tracks, no freshly disturbed snow, nothing. She grits her teeth and breathes out heavily in frustration. How could two men just disappear? Alex closes her eyes and looks up at the sky. Hoping for some clarity.

A trail of smoke above the tree line confuses her and then her heart beats faster. She laughs unexpectedly out of sheer joy. She quickly covers her mouth but keeps on smiling. The chase is over. She has won. This is the break she needed. Alex knows that the men were exhausted and in need of rest. Clearly, thinking they had lost her, they decided to set up camp. Leaving themselves exposed. Alex takes a couple of deep breaths and uses her rifle scope to get a better look.

There’s a house out in the fields ahead. It’s dimly lit, shabby, but clearly occupied by someone that didn’t want to be found. Most of the windows are covered up by brown sacks.

 

When she reaches the small stone house, she feels elated.

 

Knowing she still has the element of surprise Alex takes a quick peek inside. There is a bed of straw in front of the fire and someone is sleeping on it. Her breath fogs up the window before she can see which man it is. It doesn’t matter, she will kill them both.

A gun cocks behind her and even though she tries to move away, the bullet lodges itself in her leg. She falls. The officer stands out from behind the shadows. “It appears that the butcher has come to the slaughter.” He says in heavily accented Russian. Alex groans. No matter how many times you’ve been shot before, it always hurts like the first time. He makes a disappointed sound before kicking her so hard she lands on her back.

He puts his foot on her chest to keep her still. “You know butcher, after hearing all about you and personally seeing your handiwork, I must say that I am disappointed that you won’t last more than a couple of bullets.” She moves her left hand towards her discarded rifle, but it’s too late. He looks at her through the end of his sights and she closes her eyes.

A shot rings out and the pressure eases on her chest. “Who are you?” He shouts in Russian. Then another shot and his body falls next to hers.

Alex opens her eyes and a set of green ones stare back at her. A pale woman in an ill-fitting coat blinks rapidly, assessing her. Alex wonders how someone can still manage to look good in a dirty, borrowed coat. Her cheeks are hollow but there is a fire inside of her. Even on the brink of starvation, Alex understands that this woman is just like her. She can admire that.

The other woman asks her something in a language Alex can’t quite place. Alex puts her hands up in surrender and explains that she’s part of the Red Army. That she’s a sniper sent here to help train partisans like herself to stand up against the threat of socialism. To stand up and fight against the Germans.

 

The woman points at Alex and speaks in gibberish. When Alex doesn’t move, she rolls her eyes. The other woman points back to her house, then to Alex, and she finally moves her hands in a downward motion. Telling her to wait. Alex nods and the woman holsters her gun. She grabs a satchel from the snow, drops it inside and methodically goes over the German’s bodies before setting down everything that would be useful inside her home. This includes her rifle.

She approaches Alex, tells her something, and then she’s trying to haul her up and into her home. The pain that radiates from her leg makes it hard to put any pressure on it and her vision turns to black.

Once they’re inside, the woman sets he down on the ground, leaning against the door.

She rushes to the bed in front of the fire and tenderly touches the forehead of its occupant while trying to rouse them. Alex groans and the woman turns back to her. Giving her the perfect view of blonde curls on top of the pillow. Reminding her of Kara’s hair. Alex smiles warmly, thinking of her sister. Before realizing that it’s not an illusion. Kara, who looked close to dying was in front of her. Kara, who she swore to protect.

Even with the pain shooting up her body, Alex scrambles to her feet. “Who are you? What have you done with my sister?” She shouts. The other woman stands up along with Alex and starts speaking very quickly. Her rifle is across the room. But Alex didn’t need a gun to be lethal. If Stalingrad had taught her one thing, it was that in close quarters, anything could become a weapon.

Alex took a step forward, ignoring the pain that threatened to render he unconscious and pointed an accusing finger at the other woman. “If you’re the one that hurt my sister, I will show you with my bare hands how the butcher survived Stalingrad during the siege. I won’t even need my rifle for this.” To show the woman she was serious she kicked the German’s weapons out of reach and headed towards her. Ignoring how her leg seems to ooze blood with each step. Making her feel lightheaded.

With a hand on Kara’s body, the other woman blindly grabbed at her feet and held up a dull bread knife. Gone was the kinship of survival she once found in those eyes. Replaced by steel. She positioned her body protectively in front of Kara’s sleeping form and with a steady voice she answered Alex. Even without understanding a word she said, it was clear that she would die before she let Alex take a step closer to Kara.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Almost done. I'm not too sure if the next chapter will be the last or if I will write another chapter after that. But I swear I am not dragging this out anymore than that.


	4. Through the Darkness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lena nurses the girl that fell to earth back to health and faces off against a dangerous stranger that breaks up their bubble of domestic bliss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Kara/Lena feels are here and they're real.

 

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

 

Lena closed her eyes for a moment. Trying to think of what to do in this particular situation and only able to come up with images of clear blue skies. She sighed and looked at the pilot’s face again.

“You’re badly injured. What should I do?” Lena asked out loud with a hint of panic in her voice. Her eyes never leaving his face. She frowned, trying to think back to her training as an intelligence operative. Something beyond sabotage and bomb making. Feeling unprepared for this specific eventuality. Nobody told her how to save a fallen angel.

She blinked fast at the hot feeling in her eyes. Thinking back to her company and how she jumped headfirst into building every piece needed for this war. Her intelligence only serving to make this world better through violence. She gently brushed snow off his face and sighed. She only knew how to destroy. How to take things apart, burn everything into the ground.

Shaking her head to ward off those thoughts, Lena tried to think about how she could keep another person alive despite their injuries. Coming up blank until she started to breathe a bit slower. “Maybe I should check to see where the injury is.” She whispered as deft fingers made their way over his hair and face.

Finding nothing wrong there, Lena knows she has to turn him over. She needs a better look at the body that’s half buried in red snow. Grunting with the effort, sweat rolls down her back in spite of the biting cold that chaps her hands, leaving every piece of exposed skin feeling raw. With one final heave and a surprised yelp, she promptly drops him almost as soon as she managed to get a better look. A branch, almost as thick as her palm, is sticking out of him. She puts her foot on his chest and pulls. Falling on her back as the branch dislodges itself with a sick, wet sound.

Blood rushes out and she jumps on top of him. Putting her hands right on the wound. Warm blood meets frozen fingers. _“Now what?”_ she thinks to herself as the blood slows down but doesn’t stop. For once she’s without a plan. A next step to look towards. It leaves her feeling unmoored. Not knowing how to help this poor, broken creature.

Lena knows that she needs to find help fast, but she’s disoriented and lost. She licks her lips and looks down. If she were to leave him to get some help, he would surely perish as she would be unable to lead anyone back to him. The only option was to scout ahead for hospitals or houses or even a road under all this snow. But she also doubts she can carry him on her shoulders.

“Bloody hell, what a mess.” She grumbles, looking around and only able to stare at the branch that had been dislodged from him. She laughs and tears escape the corners of her eyes.

Maybe she doesn’t have to carry anything at all.

Lena dumps the contents of her knapsack on top of him and rips the sheet into small strips of fabric. Stuffing the wound with two strips and tying the rest around this to stem the blood flow. She brings the branch over and slides him on top of it. Grabbing the thick branch with both hands, Lena heads forward.

 

 

The sun overhead moves sluggishly. Sweat keeps pooling beneath her clothes. Making her shiver harder against the cold whenever she has to stop moving. It’s slow, frustrating work, walking further into the forest. Not knowing when she’ll reach anything besides more trees.

 

It all seems worth it as soon as she sees the trees clearing up ahead. Her heart beats faster and she can feel a wave of excitement wash over her. She keeps pushing forward until she sees it. A small house is up ahead. Lena jumps up and down from where she is. Waving her arms and shouting that she needs help as loud as she can. Lena tries to run, but in her excitement, she trips over her own feet. Lena releases the branch when she feels the bark cut into her palms. Tumbling alone over the small ledge. Stopping when she lands at the edge of the field.

She feels overjoyed laughing as she runs towards the house.

Once she gets there she frantically knocks on the door. Shouting for help. When she hears nothing other than her own labored breathing, she gives the knob a twist. It’s empty. She deflates as soon as she sees that she’s alone.

 

 

 

 

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

It had taken her the rest of the day to prepare everything. It was pitch black outside by the time she finished nailing the last of the empty sacks she found in the old farmhouse over the windows. It wasn’t ideal, but it was the best she could do to observe complete blackout in the middle of nowhere. Knowing that any light could make her a target for air-raids. From either side.

Lena washed her hands with the bar of soap and the too hot water. Her skin turned an angry red. She winced but didn’t stop. She looked over her back, from the kitchen sink, towards the fire in the hearth. Hoping that the bandages she had boiled clean in order to be able to re-use them were dry by now. Slowly, Lena took another pot of melted snow towards the living room. Setting it down on the floor, next to the table she had set up for this purpose.

As carefully as she could, she stripped the pilot of his clothes. Starting with the thick jacket and helmet. Lena stops for a second as golden hair spills out. Her heart beats faster and all she can think of is _“oh, that’s new.”_ when she’s unable to place the new feeling inside her. It takes work to unbuckle the brown straps around the pilot’s body and it feels like even longer to remove the blue overcoat that lays on top of the green uniform.

She’s down to the blood stained undershirt and as her fingers trace the lines made by lean abdominal muscles Lena thinks of Jack. The beach. And she hates herself for that. Not sure why. It feels like a betrayal. She wants to get rid of that feeling so she pushes the shirt up and instantly pulls it down again. Deep red tinging her cheeks and a feeling of confusion settles inside of her.

 

Lena tries. Does she ever try to ignore everything swirling in her stomach as she begins cleaning up the wound. Her traitorous eyes keep wandering up, leaving her more confused than ever. It takes so long, the process of pushing the skin together and sewing it back up. The newly formed lines look jagged and crooked. When her eyes aren’t wandering, her thoughts are. She thinks about how lucky she was to find this home, everything still intact. Almost as if the family had just disappeared into thin air one day. It rips an ugly cry out of her throat. All those lost souls in the train. In the camp. Her eyes burn and the tears render her blind while she tries to swallow down the grief.

She has no time for that she tells herself.

Out here you either live or you die.

Struggling to breathe, Lena walks over to the kitchen sink and cries as she washes her hands.

Starting from where she left off, she continues to sew. The black thread runs out and she switches to yellow. Pretending that it was because it was the next color in the tin, instead of the real reason. It reminds her of the pilot’s hair. Lena smiles as she sews.

 

 

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

It took two days to learn her name. In Gaelic it means friend. Somehow that word makes her uncomfortable. She likes the sentiment behind her mother’s reasoning instead. In Russian her name means little dear one. It suits her. _Kara_. _Ka-ra_. Lena likes sounding the name out to herself when Kara is resting. So different coming from her than Lena’s own English accent.

 

Although still weak and sluggish from the blood loss. Whenever she’s not sleeping most of the day off, Kara’s smile lights up the room. She gives Lena these big smiles that set her alight. Lena bites her lip to stop herself from grinning like an idiot whenever she gets one, along with a compliment. Her hands, it seems, are constantly wringing something so she won’t reach out and touch delicate skin beyond the stitched lines she “checks up on” almost hourly.

Lena tries to be good about it. Sticking to that small expanse of skin in a manner she hopes is professional and detached. But she can’t help catching illicit peeks of other patches of skin whenever Kara feels the itch to move from one end of the room to the other. Exhausting herself by walking the 14 steps from the bed to the wall and back again. Lena doing most of the work. Kara breathes heavily against her ear and neck.

At night, they share a bed. Lena is fine with this. Pretending that they need the warmth while living in the drafty house during the winter. Kara doesn’t need to pretend. She says she likes holding Lena, regardless of the temperature. Admitting that she likes listening to Lena sleep whenever she wakes up at night. Lena doesn’t understand what’s happening. It’s suffocating and yet she wants more.

Craves it.

She closes her eyes and pretends that Kara only likes holding her because if she wakes up alone in bed she sobs so hard from her nightmares that she makes herself bleed. In her half-awake, half-asleep state she answers Lena in terrified Russian. Not able to switch to French until her eyes go from glassy and panic filled to focused on Lena.

Only those reasons make Lena not feel like she will pass out.

 _“It’s illegal.”_ She thinks once but buries it down by whispering secrets.

Desperate to fill the silence with everything but those thoughts. She talks mostly of Leon, her sweet baby boy. His soft hair and that intoxicating smell of someone so new. Sometimes she mentions her mother. Wonders if she threw herself down a well when the countryside became overrun with trainloads of children fleeing the cities. Kara holds her as she cries. As she questions if she doomed Leon by loving him too much. For refusing to let him go beyond the city limits. Maybe she is like her mother after all.

Kara admits she doesn’t like the war. That she misses her family. Her friends… real chocolate. It makes Lena smile. Hearing Kara talk about her love of food. Obsessing over what she will eat first when she’s able to get more than what she was rationed in the army. Wondering if she will ever feel full after only able to eat a slice or two of rationed bread that tastes wrong because the flour is often cut down with something else like sawdust to make it stretch more days. Tired of the watery broth that ran out of potatoes and carrots by the 10th girl.

What Kara doesn’t share is her world being on fire. The night they lost the first girls and the ones after that. Kara doesn’t talk about the way the Germans burn everything down. Regardless of what direction they move in. Scorching everything as they push forward in their attacks. Flamethrowers boiling soldiers alive in the turrets if they were unlucky enough to survive the first couple of grenades. Blowing up their own tanks, every bridge they crossed, and all the villages along with their inhabitants as they retreated. Leaving nothing but ashes for them to find.

Instead of sharing these things with her, Kara asks Lena to teach her English. Wanting to find out the exact shade of green Lena’s eyes are as a way to ward off the nightmares that always grip her whenever she closes her eyes for a second.

 

 

****

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

The day their routine changed had started like any other. Kara talked about food, this time concentrating on the hospital samovar where her mother works. _Worked._ She corrects herself. Trying not to feel hollow at not knowing if her mama made it out of the motherland. If her sister was still alive. She smiles through the sadness, pretending it’s not there as she tells Lena about the caravan tea that tastes sweet and smoky. How she craves the setup with the sugar, lemon and jam out in the open in the closed off offices meant for nurses and doctors.

Lena talks about Leon and how she misses his voice. Even in the middle of war she had been able to call home. Never letting a week go by without begging Jess to hold the phone next to him and hear his excited babbling. Only having learnt how to say no and mama when she left. She was besides herself with worry when Kara told her to just call him up. Lena rolled her eyes. As if it were that simple. Kara shrugged and asked why not.

“It’s impossible… I don’t even know where we are.” Kara pulled out a map from the lining of her jacket and pointed to a spot north of Kiev. “That’s easy, we’re right here.” Lena’s eyebrows shot up in disbelief. “Or at least we should be around here. I didn’t really get a good look at everything before my plane was shot down. But if you were to walk along this path over here,” her finger traced a route as she talked. “then you would be able to reach Irpen within a day or two.” She bit her lip, feeling unsure about leaving Kara alone and vulnerable. “I’ll be fine Lena.” She reassured her, as if reading her mind. “Just leave me some supplies near the bed and I’ll take care of myself.” Lena shook her head. Afraid to leave.

 

 

In the end, sweet and selfless Kara convinced her to leave.

 

 

 

**_1943 – Irpen_ **

 

When Jess answered the phone, she sobbed so loudly that her father had to take over the conversation. Explaining that Lena had been reported missing and presumed dead last year. That French authorities extended their condolences when she had been captured. No one really escaped their interrogations intact when they had valuable information and didn’t sell out other resistance fighters. Many had turned against their colleagues to save their own skin.

Even one of her SOE friends confirmed that she was being transported to a place called Dachau meant to hold political prisoners like her. When Lena hadn’t arrived, they assumed she’s perished during the allied bombing that aided the escape of another British asset. She had used the confusion from the strike to return home and her description of her fellow passengers helped paint a clearer picture of who wasn’t returning home.

To Jess it was impossible that she would be on the phone a year later, asking to speak to her son. Lena cried and told him that she was fine. She was in Kiev, waiting for a friend to recover before they headed back to London.

After talking to her son she asked Jess to contact some old friends she met in France. She needed help evading recapture as she made her way home.

 

 

****

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

With her son’s high pitched squeals of joy and choruses of _“mama”_ to push her forward, Lena felt lighter than she had in months.

The trek back felt easy. Even as she hid out in abandoned buildings, biting the palm of her hand so as to not let out a cry, beneath floorboards as soldiers walked above her. It was easy because her son was alive and soon she would be able to hold him.

 

 

Lena being happy meant that something had to go wrong.

 

She saw the men up ahead and felt a wave of nausea wash over her. Instantly recognizing their grey-green uniform. Of course they would find her. Lena shivered, feeling ill. She was so close to going home. So close to holding her son again. Her cheeks were slick with tears. If she left, she could save herself. Her shoulders dropped at that ugly thought. Disappointed in herself for even entertaining that idea. There was something so special and so confusing about Kara that she couldn’t stop her body from moving forward.

Walking softly upon the freshly fallen snow that had covered her footfalls leading out of the stone home she made her way towards them. Avoiding the patches with ice that had bruised her sides when she was first navigating around the property for supplies found in the old farmhouse. Powered by determination. Either she lived one more day for her son or they would drag her corpse back to that prison if they wanted her back so badly.

 

Two shots is all it takes.

 

Their lifeless bodies fall and before Lena can feel anything about this, she spots a woman laying down on the snow. She is injured. The sight is so familiar that it warms her heart. Even the green uniform is the same shade as Kara’s. Lena believes that she must be a higher rank though, as the medals that line up over her chest are more numerous and shiny.

 

 

Lena had felt good about their meeting. Although she didn’t speak Russian. There was something familiar about her eyes. She helped her inside and tried to wake Kara up to tell her that she was back from her trip. As soon as she turned her back though, the other woman’s demeanor instantly changed.

 

 

 

Lena had to act quickly. Whatever upset the other woman was making her act in a dangerous fashion. She reached behind her, grounding herself with Kara’s steady presence while her other hand fumbled around for a weapon. In the heat of the moment, she couldn’t feel the gun pressing against her hip. Too busy worrying about putting herself in front of a still healing Kara and the newcomer. “Stay where you are. This is your only warning not to come closer.”

The other woman didn’t understand her or didn’t care enough to stop. She tried to step closer.

Lena launched herself at her legs, knocking her down. She saw how hard the other woman struggled to stay awake. Both the hit on the head from landing too hard against the floor and the blood loss aiding Lena in being able to overpower her momentarily. The moment was lost soon after. Even while shaking, the hands that wound themselves around her throat were strong. Lena struggled to breathe. She looked around the darkening room with uncertain eyes and the hand that wasn’t trying to peel away the fingers at her throat, tightened around the handle of the knife. She grit her teeth and used the last remnants of her strength to plunge it into the woman’s leg.

The reaction was instantaneous. Precious air could finally enter her lungs. Lena thought back to when she was being interrogated and she knew that this could never be worse. But it was comparable. The other woman slid on her own blood while trying to put some distance between them. When she tried to take the knife out of the gunshot wound, she caused herself so much pain she passed out.

Using this opportunity, Lena tore down one of the sacks that was covering the windows and ripped it open. She twisted it into a crude rope to tie down the other woman and got to work. She dug the knife deeper and used it to push muscle apart. The woman drifted in and out of consciousness while Lena struggled to dig the bullet that was lodged inside her leg. She mumbled things in her native tongue and even tried to move away when she poured cold water on it to wash the wound.

 

Familiar with the process of creating new bandages from torn strips of cloth, Lena went outside to strip the German bodies of every scrap they wore. As she waited for the bandages to dry near the fire, Lena dragged their naked bodies towards the small ledge near the forest. Letting the snow do all the work when it came to hiding them.

 

Lena closed the wound as carefully as she could. Even if she didn’t like being assaulted, she felt responsible for her newly acquired prisoner. She didn’t know what the other woman had wanted when she attacked her, but once Kara woke up they could figure it out together.

 

 

****

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

 

She fought to wake up. Against the darkness. Against the throbbing pain in her head. Against the burning fire in her leg.

Once she was conscious Alex blinked heavy eyelids until the room came into focus. The only light coming from the fireplace. On the bed, facing her, is the woman that killed two men and nearly cut her leg off. Her face is slack and resting on Kara’s shoulder. An action so familiar that she forgets herself and calls out for her little sister, scolding her. “Kasha!” Instantly regretting it when her attacker stirs.

Panic fills her and she holds her breath. Releasing a quiet sigh as the woman simply burrows further against Kara. Her lips dangerously close to the hollow of Kara’s neck. Making Alex feel hot and uncomfortable with how close they are. Reminding her of the men that had been sent to the gulags for being too friendly with their schoolmates. Of the women like them that ended up being institutionalized along with the dissidents that opposed the party for being schizophrenic.

Intellectually she knows it’s wrong. But in her heart, she knows her little sister isn’t sick. Or crazy. She’s her childhood friend. Her companion when it came to getting into trouble. Her support system when her mother blamed her for things beyond her control. The first one to forgive and try to make things right after a fight. Even when Alex was the one who spat out harsh words meant to push her away. Just to be able to hang out with her friends without a baby chasing after them.

Those memories made her feel ashamed for making her sister feel like she didn’t belong next to her when they were younger. Too self-conscious about being the wrong kind of girl to think about Kara’s feelings. Especially now, when she can’t think of what she would do without her.

 

Alex wants to cry at how pale she looks now. So much thinner than before. Yet still able to hold onto all the muscle she built because she was too busy running around helping everyone that crossed her path. Having a line of sweet old ladies wait for her to come back from school so they could go back into their apartments with Kara at their side. It never bothered her, making those trips that took hours from her day as she would carry their things up perilous flight of stairs while supporting their frail bodies.

They paid her in sweets and tea.

Kara even got the grouchiest residents to laugh and smile with her. The same residents that often ran over Alex’s toes with their wheeled shopping carts while maintaining eye contact. As if the sidewalk belonged to them. Their demeanor would change to honey as her sister asked after their grandkids or what was new in the town square. In the winter Kara would shovel snow. She was the kind of girl that would willingly put others before herself.

 

She looks up at the roof and lets the tears fall from the corner of her eyes. She clenches her hands against her ties and is surprised to find them so loose. Alex looks at her sister and at the woman. _“What’s another day?”_ She thinks as she settles back against the wall and closes her eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everyone thank you so much for all the kudos and feedback you've given me. I'm so psyched at how much you're enjoying this story.


	5. The Wolves Are Closing In

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The war comes knocking at their doorstep and the three women must make an important decision that will shape the rest of their lives.

****

 

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

The screaming wakes her up.

It’s inhumane.

Alex is unable to move. Almost as if her arms were stuck together. Her breathing speeds up but she remains quiet. She’s back in Stalingrad. The flames that bounce shadows along the walls from across the room are suddenly licking at her feet. Closing in. She can’t move. The grain is burning all around her. Still, she has to pretend to be dead until the bullets stop spraying into every body that twitches. Screams come from underneath the rubble and bombs keep raining down on them.

“Not the children. Please spare the children.” She hears someone shout repeatedly. She looks for Florentina.

She can’t find them. All the people they tried to save. Panic rises in her throat and Alex wonders why everything feels so wrong. Alex’s fingers grasp at each other. She doesn’t know where her rifle is.

The wind howls outside.

The fire crackles to life near her.

She’s still frozen in her spot. Until a wet thunk is heard outside. Even then it takes her a while to realize the shouting had stopped. The only sounds in the room are the soft sparks from the heath and the wind rattling the windows. Soft voices drift up towards the ceiling. They speak unintelligibly. She shivers. It’s so cold yet she’s sweating. Alex doesn’t remember if she survived. She thinks she never left Stalingrad.

Her eyes, owlishly large, trying to search for an exit take in the fire without the suffocating smoke. She wants to take a deep breath but she’s afraid of being discovered. Instead she leans back until the rough wood cuts into her hands. That’s when she relishes the way her shoulders ache. How her leg throbs. Because it all adds up to one thing. She’s out of that hellish city. She did survive.

That’s all it takes.

The spell is broken and she’s back in the stone house.

Alex’s gaze is drawn to the bed in front of her. All she can think about is her little sister. Her little buckwheat. Kara. She’s awake. Except it’s all wrong. Kara is breathing like she forgot how to control her body. Erratic and too big. Her eyes are wild, running over everything but not seeing. The woman with the green eyes keeps her voice as even as she can while talking to her sister. When that doesn’t draw her back, she grabs Kara’s hand and puts it on top of her heart. Then she gently turns Kara’s face towards hers and chases her gaze with her own eyes. Refusing to be ignored.

After a while, a change happens. Kara’s eyes stop jumping in fear and her breathing is becoming regular again. She closes her eyes and whispers “Lena” before pressing her forehead against that woman’s and laughs. No longer crying and lost in the dark. The woman with the green eyes is so different with Kara. She’s so gentle. She brushes the tears away from Kara’s face with such tenderness that Alex can’t breathe. Kara leans into the touch and smiles. Their  eyes meet and there’s this moment that makes Alex think of the nights she shared a bed with her childhood friend, Viktoria. Whose name she can’t even say to herself anymore without feeling a pang of hurt. Her loss still resonating inside Alex who never understood why they drifted apart after years of being so close. She didn’t understand why they couldn’t be friends after Viktoria excitedly shared the news of her first kiss with the pharmacist’s son while they hid under the covers of her bed. It made her stomach ache. For some reason Alex remembers that day being harder than the day Viktoria got married.

Alex thought it would always remain a mystery, why they drifted apart. Why she chose to start fights over insignificant things. Until now. When Kara takes her hand from the other woman’s heart and gently runs her fingers over her jaw. Eyes bright in wonder. Alex feels confused and her heart beats faster as her sister closes her eyes and leans in. The air is sucked out of the room and Alex feels the blood rush to her head. The wind outside is muffled. The fire within grows brighter as Kara tangles her fingers in jet black hair. All the doubts she ever had burn away. Alex finally understands why she never wanted to think about her friend again. That ache she carried inside of her has a name.

Her heart had been broken in a way she didn’t know was possible.

 

After a while they stop kissing but they don’t pull apart. Kara smiles so brightly her eyes crinkle at the corners. It fractures her in a new way. To see her sister look like the girl she remembers before the war. So young and carefree. The girl she tried to keep safe but couldn’t keep away from the bloodshed. She’s here now. Whispering secrets and stealing kisses. Exchanging exhausted smiles full of hope with some woman that didn’t have a problem killing two Fritz but faltered when it came to hurting a wounded Alex. She frowns as they settle back into the bed. Holding each other tightly until their breaths even out.

 

Alex can’t sleep. There’s a new feeling in the pit of her stomach. It’s unsettling. Even more so than the confusion that twisted to realization earlier. This is something akin to devastation. Or anger. It burns her.

 

She doesn’t want to think about it. She can’t go to sleep. She can’t help it. Alex knows that she isn’t angry at the woman. Or her sister. Or even at what they are. What she could be too. She’s angry at the way they fit so easily like this. Together. Saving each other. Comforting each other. It should be her comforting her sister. Taking care of her. Not in the same way. Not at all. But it should always be her, the person her little sister needs. She clenches her teeth together and swallows down those feelings. They’re green and ugly. She wants to bury them down and forget about them. When Kara holds the woman closer against her side, like she’s a lifeline, it only serves to make her feel worse.

Alex feels unmoored and alone. Without being her sister’s protector, is she even a person at all?

 

 

 

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

She senses movement near her and Alex struggles to wake up this time. Her head feels like it’s filled with cotton and her eyes are grainy. She tries to blink away the sleep. To focus on something besides the blinding pain in her leg and the way her shoulders ache. How she can’t feel the tips of her fingers. Her eyes take in the scene in front of her. The other woman is tracing Kara’s soft skin with hesitant fingers. Biting her lip and closing her eyes before looking up at Kara’s face. After a breath or two she continues. Kara shifts and it’s like she wakes up from whatever she was thinking. The woman continues to clean an ugly wound on Kara’s side. Washing off caked blood. Revealing jagged lines healing along uneven stitching. Alex winced, thinking about the ugly scarring it would leave. Clearly done by an inexperienced hand. The woman doesn’t seem to think of this. She smiles as she cleans the wound and redresses it with new bandages.

Kara doesn’t groan. Or wake up. The woman dumps the bloody water in the sink. Washing the cup and her hands thoroughly before looking in her direction. Alex stiffens. She looks down at her leg and it’s wrapped in a bandage that’s more red than white. There’s a bloody butter knife next to her and a lump that used to be a bullet. The floor is still shiny with congealed blood that remains on top of the wooden floor. Alex feels dizzy. Knowing that having the bullet out of her leg, even with such a sloppy field operation, is best. But it doesn’t stop her from thinking about the muscle and nerves healing improperly.

The woman moves towards the heath, grabbing some bandages that were drying in front of it. Along with a cup of freshly boiled water and an old sewing kit. She heads towards her. Alex remember the ugly stitches at Kara’s side, the way her own scars, still pink and healing, made other girls look too closely at her body and she pushes against the wall. “Don’t you fucking touch me.” She yells. Forgetting how loosely tied her restraints are.

The woman frowns and shushes her. Pointing to Kara’s sleeping form as a way of explaining herself. “Kara! Kasha! Kasha! Please wake up and tell this monster not to touch me with her clumsy hands that no prisoner would want near their rags at the gulag!” The woman jumps on top of her and covers her mouth. Alex is about to bite down on her palm when she hears her sister complain. “Sasha, five more minutes please.”

They freeze.

“Kara?” The woman on top of her asks in a raspy voice that isn’t louder than a whisper. She clears her throat and tries again. Her voice is too soft again. Alex turns from her sister to glare. She might not speak her language but she can let the other woman know with one look exactly what she thinks of her. Her eyes meet the deep purple and yellow bruises at her neck. Matching Alex’s hands. She looks down at her leg in shame. Even though she almost killed her, this woman is still trying to heal her. The fight drains out of her.

The woman doesn’t pay her any attention until she’s sure that Kara is asleep again.

When she peels the bandages off her leg, Alex grits her teeth to stop herself from screaming. Her leg is a throbbing mess that still bleeds a bit. She wants to let this woman know that she’s a doctor. That she has been trained for this. The words die on her tongue the second the needle pierces her skin. Alex wants to fight the woman off. To throw her against the floor and run out the door. All she can manage to do is grunt in pain as her head lolls to the side before she passes out.

 

 

 

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

When she comes to again, it’s to the feeling of cool hands on her forehead. She chokes on air. Thinking back to the day they bombed Stalingrad. When a boy from Moscow pulled her out of the River Volga. His hands were colder than the river itself. He struggled to pull her up as her legs gave out and the water weighed her uniform down until she felt so heavy that she would never stand again. All those people, still in the city, while it went up in flames. Yet here she was, drowning in a river of flames. Having too much water and being unable to carry it. Unable to even carry herself.

She doesn’t hear herself complain until a cold hand makes its way up her back and suddenly her eyes are wide open, and she pushes her sister off without thinking. “Kara! Stop it or I’ll tell mama there’s a field mouse in your kasha again!” Kara grunts in pain and her eyes water. Alex had pushed her right where she was healing. The other woman is on her knees and next to Kara within a second. Lifting her shirt and checking the bandages before Kara holds her hands still and tenderly touches her face. Smiling and reassuring her in their gibberish language.

 

“I’m so sorry my little buckwheat… I… I didn’t… I would never hurt you…” She apologizes with shame in her voice. Kara, ever patient and already used to Alex’s demeanor, waves off her concern. “It’s fine Sasha… it’s my fault… really… I shouldn’t have been so mean… I know you hated it when I used to hold snow in my hands before waking you up in the mornings. But Lena says that my hands are like ice in the mornings and at night… I guess from the lack of circulation now that all my blood is healing me or whatever science happens… you’re a doctor so you would know...” Alex nods as she tries to follow her sister’s ramblings.

“So, Lena says, that’s Lena by the way.” Kara points to the only other woman in the stone house. Who uses this opportunity to clear her throat and stand up. Putting some distance between Kara and herself while staring longingly at her. Unable to hide how much she aches to make her feel better. Kara, unaware of this, continues. “She saved your life and I guess mine too... and she says my hands are cold in the mornings and at night too. Especially when I hold her and…” Kara blushes and bites her lip, looking like she wants to take back her words but not knowing how. So, in typical Kara fashion, she continues to fill the silence. “Yeah, so I have cold hands now and since you weren’t waking up… even after we moved you… well not we, we… it was mostly Lena… or well… it was all Lena because well I can’t bend down yet.” Kara lifts her shirt for emphasis as she continues. “See… I can’t bend or well Lena won’t let me do anything besides walk in a straight line and sleep… she’s worse than you… but she moved you from the wall next to the door after I told her you were my sister and next to the fire and you didn’t even get all mean again. Which I’m mad at you by the way, because she helped you and you weren’t very nice to her at all. You could have killed her and then she wouldn’t have moved you next to the fire to be warm or try to wake you up for breakfast at all. She also made kasha by the way… did you know the English call it porridge? That’s weird, right? Imagine if that was my nickname instead of—” Alex cuts off her sister by enveloping her in a giant hug and crying into her neck.

“I was so worried about you.” Alex confesses between ugly sobs. “That stupid Matveyev boy read your letter and he…” Alex can’t finish the sentence. She just claws uselessly at Kara’s shirt. Asking for something without having the words for her. Kara, knowing what she needed, made herself as small as possible. Letting Alex wrap her arms around her. Making her big sister feel happy. Just like when they were kids and her mama had made her cry with her words again. Making her feel like she was a disappointment because she couldn’t take care of Kara just the right way. Always coming up short.

Her sister would find her, long after the tears would dry, and make Alex feel big and important by letting her hug her so tightly that Kara swore Alex would break her bones one day. It always made her feel stronger. It made her feel like she was the best sister in the world. Even when she was at her worst, Kara would always have this special way of making her feel like she mattered. Even when she should be apologizing, like when she had left Kara behind, laughing as her sister’s eyes filled with tears because her big sister refused to wait for her but had waited for her friends. Even then, if Alex was retreating into herself, just for a moment, Kara would forget her harsh words or how much she’d been hurt by her and let her sister hold her. Hugging her back just as tightly. Once, when they were on the road to becoming inseparable, the way they are now, Alex had said that Kara’s hugs helped because it was almost as if she were squeezing the sadness right out of her. Until all that was left was a calm and happy feeling that was like sunshine.

 

 

 

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

 

The stone house felt like it was two different places.

During the day there was an uneasy peace between Alex and Lena. She had tried to apologize, but she had never learned how to do it properly in her own native tongue. Much less another language. Lena was polite and helpful but hard to get to know without Kara acting as a buffer between them. Without her to encourage them to have a conversation, everything felt stilted and wrong.

Not because of the language barrier.

It was her. It was Lena. She had burst into the haven they had built inside this small house, bringing the reality of the war back to them by nearly taking Lena away. On top of trying to figure out how both Alex and Lena could love Kara in different ways and still fit into her life. Logically she knew that Lena would never replace her. No one else would be Kara’s sister and Lena clearly didn’t want to fill that role. But it was hard adjusting from being the only person that mattered in Kara’s life. The one she told every passing thought to. To feeling like an afterthought. Even when there was no one else in their stone house.

Therefore, it wasn’t the language barrier.

It was them. With nothing else to do but heal, Alex was actually picking up a couple of words here and there of English. However, she wasn’t as motivated as Kara. She didn’t care enough to learn anything beyond letting Lena know if she was hungry or thirsty while Kara was sleeping. It was logical, seeing as she was the only one taking care of two injured women, to want to at least be polite when asking Lena to get her something. Sometimes she slipped and said one or two words in Russian. Mostly innocuous things like “spaseeba” after being handed a cup of water. Only to be surprised by Lena’s quick reply “Ni stoit.” She didn’t falter or recognize she answered in another language, too busy looking back at Kara’s sleeping form to notice.

If she hadn’t proven to be anything but loyal, or as loyal as you could be when you’re undeniably in love with someone in secret, it would have worried her. Lena had a mind so sharp that Alex often questioned what she was really doing out here. They were in the middle of nowhere, Ukraine, and she spent her time taking care of two Russian defectors as if she had nowhere else to be.

Kara, being Kara, had never thought to ask her. Taking Lena’s kindness and existence at face value. Alex knew, however, that women like Lena didn’t just end up thousands of miles away from home without a reason. Much less in the middle of a war. It made Alex be both impressed with her and wary. Wanting to keep her at arm’s length on top of not understanding how to fit with Kara when Lena took up so much room.

 

 

At night, the stone house was different.

It was an ethereal place that was caught between dreams and reality. Sometimes nightmares would wake them up. Limbs thrashing and screams echoing until their throats were raw. Alex would lock up. She never screamed. Alex learned how dangerous it was to make a noise while in Stalingrad. When buildings were contested floor by floor. Having the enemy shooting from above made her swallow down any noise she would have ever wanted to make.

Instead Alex would wake up and try to look elsewhere. Out of respect for Kara and Lena. There was no way to give them actual privacy with a house so small that one room functioned as both bedroom and kitchen. The other room was cold and unheated. The fireplace only able to keep one room of the drafty house warm. It made using the toilet an uncomfortable journey that was more of a cold nightmare than anything else.

Whenever Alex couldn’t keep her eyes closed, convince herself to go back to sleep, or even look at the ceiling. How the shadows would flicker as the flames softly ate away at the logs Lena carried in from outside. She would see the ways that Lena would always know how to comfort her little sister. It hurt being shoved aside. As happy as she was that Kara wasn’t alone. It hurt feeling like she was being left behind. Kara’s eyes were bright and filled with wonder whenever she took Lena in. Never truly believing that she was real.  

Most nights, Alex would be able to soothe herself back to sleep quickly enough. Reminding herself over and over that she was in Kiev. That she was alive. That she wasn’t stuck in some hospital right before they bombed the city. That she wasn’t in some nightmarish hell, fighting for her life every minute. Exhausted and hungry. Other nights she would stare at the ceiling before she looked over at the room’s other occupants. It was confusing. Being stuck in that sleepy and warm place. Not really sleeping, not really awake with the morning light.

 

 

 

 

**_1943 – Several kilometers outside of Kiev_ **

 

As the days wore on, the vast, open steppe that surrounded them began to shake. It was so imperceptible at first, that they didn’t notice how their nights seemed more fitful. That they woke up less rested with each new day. Instead of the peace that winter brought on when it froze the indominable mud and slush that made everything outside of the main roads impossible to transverse, a new wave of nightmares crossed the frozen fields.

On a particularly bad night, even Alex couldn’t pretend she wasn’t awake. It was impossible to ignore the way the ground around them was suddenly unsteady. Alex broke the silence first. Explaining that this was probably Andrey Kravchenko’s Tank Corps. Now known as Stalingrad Guards Tank Corps. They were the first unit to reach the Dnieper River. Just north of Kiev. They had been one of the units that Alex had supported during the Kursk offensive. She wasn’t directly involved in the tank battle at Prokhorovka, as she was more concerned with training the Partisans, so they would be prepared to take up arms against their oppressors. Still, Alex remember him and his unit from having survived Stalingrad together. That was why his unit was renamed the Stalingrad Guards Tank Corps.

She felt stupid for having forgotten all about what brought her to the Eastern front. Her unit’s failed attempts to cross the Dnieper River. Tonight, brought on the understanding that the Red Army had not forgotten as easily as she had done. They had not given up.

Although she would have preferred to remain in that ethereal place that night once held here in the stone house, Alex knew that they would have to evacuate as soon as possible. “Leave me behind. Have Lena carry you until you’re steadier on your feet. You will be able to cover more kilometers this way.” Kara cut her off with a definite no.

They were still arguing about what the best solution would be when night turned into day as burning buildings, tracer rounds, and flares light up the city of Kiev. Although they were several kilometers out, they still saw the flashes of orange in the sky and the smoke trailing up above the trees. Alex crawled into bed with them and they held their breath, and each other, throughout the night.

 

 

 

By dawn, the smoke that had trailed above the tree line had dissipated. The orange flames no longer threatened to swallow up the night. It was eerily quiet.

 

 

Alex, being the most familiar with the movements of the Red Army knew that they only had a short window to act. The Germans made sure to blow up or burn anything they couldn’t take with them. They had done it in Stalingrad with their own tanks, and out here, fields of flames followed the retreating army as it travelled west. She only knew that the Germans were using this tactic because of what they had encountered before reaching Kursk. What was once a beautiful country became a devastated husk of ashes and dirt.

It put a huge strain on the Red Army’s logistics as they tried to advance. Fuel and ammunition had to be delivered by truck over hundreds of miles because the Germans were blowing up all the bridges, burning down all the towns and fields, and of course, tearing up all the railroad tracks they would no longer be using. It was why they had been unable to cross the Dnieper River in the first place. Heavy artillery and bridging equipment struggled to keep up. It was why they made tanks watertight and crossed rivers when possible.

 

If the Tank Corps had just liberated Kiev, they only had three weeks, at most, before the rest of the Red Army trailed behind them. Although they would be unable to cover much ground due to their injuries, they would take another two weeks to recover before they would press forward. If the Red Army caught up to them, instead of considering them missing in action, they would be executed or sent to the front lines again.

 

As Alex went over their options in her head she realized that after five years of being in the army, she was exhausted. Four of those years she had spent in constant battles against an enemy that was relentless and until recently, seemed undefeatable. The other battles were against her own breaking body as it struggled to heal itself just enough to be pushed onto the front lines again. She had more scars than medals and was often afraid to close her eyes at night in case her dreams turned into memories of what she saw. And the one person she wanted to protect above all others was unable to walk more than a couple of steps at a time before having to sleep off the fatigue for half a day.

 

On top of that, they didn’t know if their mother was alive, much less waiting for them.

 

The second time Alex and Kara decided to betray the party was the final time they were a part of it. Although they were unable to shed their uniforms that day, they shed their last names. At Lena’s suggestion, they picked something that “is less Russian and more English. Although you can stay as Alexandra and Kara, because your first names won’t raise any questions, you should pick something close to your last names, so you will still recognize it, but your countrymen won’t. Danvers should work.”

 

It was the first day of their new lives. From this day forth they would let the Red Army operate under the assumption that both Danvesky women were missing in action. Their mother went missing in Moscow, never to be found again, and now they were missing too. Never to be found again.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whoops, forgot that I had not, indeed, updated this fic but instead did that thing where you figure out what is going to happen in your head but don't in fact, write it down. I have 1/2 of the next chapter written and 1/3 of the one after that. So this will be updated before next week. I promise!


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